Bill Stewart

World War II

Bill Stewart is a World War II U.S. Army Air Corps veteran, recognized as one of the youngest living WWII veterans. Born in 1929, Stewart was a Boy Scout on the USS Arizona while it was homeported in Long Beach and is believed to be the last living survivor of the Arizona during its service. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he served as a 12-year-old in the Army Air Forces Ground Observer Corps from 1941 to 1943.

At age 17, Stewart enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1946 and was deployed to Japan, where he graduated in radar maintenance at the Eighth Army Signal Corps in Yokohama. He later served in Guam, repairing aircraft radars, and was recalled during the Korean War to lead a radar repair unit in Casablanca. Stewart’s postwar career included supervising the rescue and restoration of FDR’s presidential yacht, the USS Potomac, in 1962.