diff --git a/Misc/ACKS b/Misc/ACKS
index 248c433fc96..2606dffa139 100644
--- a/Misc/ACKS
+++ b/Misc/ACKS
@@ -455,6 +455,7 @@ Denis S. Otkidach
 Russel Owen
 Mike Pall
 Todd R. Palmer
+Jan Palus
 Alexandre Parenteau
 Dan Parisien
 Harri Pasanen
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index c8d64cdda39..d2aefb1e0c7 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -12,6 +12,8 @@ What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 3?
 Core and builtins
 -----------------
 
+- Patch #1488312, Fix memory alignment problem on SPARC in unicode
+
 - Bug #1487966: Fix SystemError with conditional expression in assignment
 
 - WindowsError now has two error code attributes: errno, which carries
diff --git a/Objects/unicodeobject.c b/Objects/unicodeobject.c
index 292d02b1c22..a3af7f6a858 100644
--- a/Objects/unicodeobject.c
+++ b/Objects/unicodeobject.c
@@ -2313,7 +2313,7 @@ PyObject *_PyUnicode_DecodeUnicodeInternal(const char *s,
     end = s + size;
 
     while (s < end) {
-        *p = *(Py_UNICODE *)s;
+        memcpy(p, s, sizeof(Py_UNICODE));
         /* We have to sanity check the raw data, otherwise doom looms for
            some malformed UCS-4 data. */
         if (