WASHINGTON – On Dec 7, 1941, the USS California, the flagship of the Navy’s Pacific Fleet, was moored on “battleship row” at Pearl Harbour when it was struck by Japanese torpedoes and bombs.
Officials were initially unable to identify all the 103 crew members who were killed, and the remains of 25 “unknowns” were buried in Hawaii.
But on March 28, officials announced that they had used advanced forensic technology to identify one of them as Mr David Walker, a 19-year-old mess attendant third class from Norfolk, Virginia.
“It is our duty to bring them home,” said Mr Sean Everette, a spokesman for the Defence POW/MIA Accounting Agency, or DPAA, whose mission is to find and return missing military personnel.
“It’s a promise fulfilled to the service member,” he said, adding that “we also owe it to the families to give them answers”.
Mr Walker, who attended high school in Portsmouth, Virginia, before he joined the navy, will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery in September, officials said.
A marker signifying that he has been accounted for will be placed next to his name on the Walls of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.
His remains were identified in November, officials said, nearly 82 years after the attack on Pearl Harbour, and six years after the DPAA exhumed the remains of the 25 “unknowns” connected to the USS California.
Officials said the agency used anthropological and dental analysis to identify Mr Walker. Scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System also used mitochondrial DNA analysis.
As a mess attendant, Mr Walker, who was black, would have been responsible for running the ship’s galley. Mess attendants cooked, served food and cleaned dishes.
The DPAA identified Ms Cheryle Stone, 70, as Mr Walker’s next of kin. Ms Stone, who lives in Pennsylvania, said that Mr Walker was a cousin who died before she was born.
She thought about his mother, she said, and how hard it must have been for her to not know what had happened to her son.
“That had to be horrible,” Ms Stone said.
Mr Walker is one of five sailors from the USS California whose remains have been identified since 2018. NYTIMES
