Remains of USS Oklahoma sailor from Indiana identified
Officials say the remains of a U.S. Navy sailor from Fort Wayne, Ind., who died during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor have been identified and will be buried Aug. 21 in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced Thursday that Navy Machinist’s Mate 1st Class Arthur Glenn was assigned to the USS Oklahoma, which was moored at Pearl Harbor when the ship was attacked by Japanese aircraft and capsized. The Dec. 7, 1941, attack occurred on Glenn’s 43rd birthday.
The attack resulted in the deaths of 429 crewmen aboard the Oklahoma.
The agency says Glenn’s remains were identified through DNA analysis, which matched his family, as well as dental and anthropological analysis and circumstantial evidence. AP
Remains of Utah Marine killed in Pearl Harbor coming home
The remains of a Utah Marine who died during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor are finally coming home.
Marine Pfc. Robert Kimball Holmes was 19 years old when he died while serving aboard the USS Oklahoma on Dec. 7, 1941.
He died a day after he sent his a letter home to his father in Salt Lake City, his nephew, Bruce Holmes of Sandy, told the Salt Lake Tribune Aug. 16, as he tried to imagine his grandfather receiving that letter days or weeks after learning his son had perished.
“It must have just really rattled him after his son’s already dead,” Bruce Holmes said. “Gosh. That’d get ya.”
Nearly 77 years after his death, the Marine is finally returning to Salt Lake City thanks to a recent DNA match.
A casket carrying his remains was to arrive Aug. 17 night at the Salt Lake City International Airport. A military funeral for him will take place Aug. 20 at the Salt Lake City Cemetery.
Robert K. Holmes was the youngest of seven children. All of his siblings are dead.
His 83-year-old nephew and Bruce Holmes’ older brother, Robert J. Holmes, has childhood memories of the uncle he was named after.
He remembers his uncle as a man of strengthen and intensity.
“He had a look in his eye that ‘I’m a Holmes boy and also a Marine, so don’t mess with me,’ ” the nephew said.
He told the Deseret News that the family didn’t lose hope that their uncle’s remains would come home one day.
“I don’t know if you can really mourn somebody from 77 years ago,” he said. “But it’s been so exciting to the family to finally have Uncle Bob brought home.” AP