Sailor killed at Pearl Harbor identified

The remains of a US sailor killed during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor nearly 70 years ago has been identified.

Fireman Third Class Gerald G. Lehman of Hancock, Mich., will be buried Saturday in his Michigan hometown, according to the Messenger-Index of Emmett, Idaho.

Hancock was killed on Dec. 7, 1941, while serving aboard the battleship USS Oklahoma, one of 429 sailors and Marines killed on the ship.

The Oklahoma took three torpedo hits almost immediately after the first Japanese bombs fell. As she began to capsize, two more torpedoes struck home, and her men were strafed as they abandoned ship. Within 12 minutes after the attack began, she had rolled over until halted by her masts touching bottom.

Following the attack, the identities of 36 servicemen were identified but the remaining 393 Americans were buried as unknowns in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii.

In 2003, an independent researcher contacted the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command with information he believed indicated that one of the Oklahoma casualties who was buried as an unknown could be positively identified, the publication reported.

After reviewing the case, the casket was exhumed and it was discovered that it contained Lehman’s remains.

Among other forensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence, scientists used dental comparisons and mitochondrial DNA which matched that of his sister and nieces in the identification of Lehman’s remains, according to the Messenger-Index.

This isn’t the first time that once-unknown dead from the Oklahoma have been identified. In 2008, three sailors also exhumed from the National Cemetery of the Pacific were identified.

Of the more than 400,000 Americans killed during World War II, more than 72,000 remain unaccounted for.

The 429 casualties on the Oklahoma were second only to the 1,177 who died on the USS Arizona in the attack. The Oklahoma was put in dry dock until 1944 when it was decided it was not “repairable” and sold for scrap.

It was being towed to San Francisco in 1947 when it sank in a storm more than 500 miles east of Pearl Harbor.