The Protection POW/MIA Accounting Company
David Walker from Norfolk, Va., was 19 years outdated when Japanese torpedoes sunk his battleship at Pearl Harbor in 1941. Walker was presumed useless following the assault on the Hawaii naval base, however his physique was by no means recovered — that’s, till lately.
Officers introduced on Thursday that Walker’s stays had been lastly accounted for, due to scientists on the Protection POW/MIA Accounting Company (DPAA) whose mission is to get better and return lacking service members from previous conflicts.
In a information launch, the DPAA stated that in 2018, army officers exhumed the unidentified stays of 25 individuals who had been from Walker’s battleship, the usCalifornia, and buried in Honolulu. Based on the company, scientists used anthropological, dental and DNA evaluation to find out that Walker was amongst these stays.
The DPAA stated Walker will probably be buried in Arlington Nationwide Cemetery in Virginia on Sept. 5. A rosette may even be positioned subsequent to his identify on the Courts of the Lacking on the Nationwide Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu to point that he has been accounted for.
On Dec. 7, 1941, two torpedoes pierced the port aspect of the usCalifornia, which was moored at Ford Island in Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. The assault resulted within the deaths of 103 crew members, together with Walker. The ship slowly sank over the subsequent three days, in accordance with the DPAA.
In whole, about 2,300 service members and 68 civilians had been killed in Japan’s shock assault on Pearl Harbor, which later launched the U.S. into World Struggle II. On the time, 960 sailors and marines had been reported lacking, in accordance with a New York Occasions article from 1942.
Lately, advances in DNA expertise have considerably helped establish the stays of lacking army personnel. DNA testing was credited as a key methodology within the identification of the vast majority of the almost 400 service members who went lacking on the usOklahoma, one other battleship that sunk through the assault on Pearl Harbor.