Two males who had been killed within the assaults on Pearl Harbor have been recognized greater than 80 years after their deaths, the Protection POW/MIA Accounting Company (DPAA) introduced Tuesday. The 2 sailors had been onboard the USS Oklahoma, which was docked in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked.
They had been recognized as Navy Fireplace Controlman 2nd Class George Gilbert, 20, of Indianapolis, and Navy Seaman 1st Class Wilbur F. Newton, 29, of San Leandro, California. Gilbert was listed as accounted for on August 24, 2020, and Newton was accounted for on October 12, 2021, in accordance with the DPAA.
A photograph of Newton was offered by the DPAA. No picture of Gilbert was listed.
The DPAA stated 429 crewmen had been killed, together with Gilbert and Newton, when the USS Oklahoma was torpedoed by Japanese forces and subsequently capsized. The stays of the crewmen had been interred within the Halawa and Nu'uanu cemeteries in Hawaii with out being recognized.
In September 1947, members of the American Graves Registration Service (AGRS) eliminated the stays, sending them to a lab for identification. Solely 35 crewmembers had been recognized, the DPAA stated. The unidentified stays had been returned to Honolulu's Nationwide Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, often known as the Punchbowl, and recognized as "non-recoverable" by the navy.
In 2015, almost 70 years later, DPAA personnel exhumed these stays for extra evaluation. They had been in a position to determine Gilbert and Newton utilizing dental and anthropological evaluation, in addition to mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) evaluation, in accordance with the DPAA.
Gilbert will likely be buried June 6, 2022, on the Punchbowl, whereas Newton will likely be buried Might 28, 2022, in Mound Metropolis, Missouri.
Their names, that are recorded on the Courts of the Lacking on the Punchbowl, could have a rosette positioned subsequent to them to point out they've been recognized, the DPAA stated.