A spokesman for the Arlington National Cemetery confirmed to AFP that a US sailor who died during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor more than 80 years ago had been buried there on Tuesday.
The morning of December 7, 1941, Japanese airplanes launched a surprise attack, leaving 21-year-old Herbert Jacobson, known to his family as Bert, missing.
Over 2,000 Americans died as a result of the attack, which drew the US into World War II and damaged or destroyed the majority of the US fleet stationed at the Hawaii naval base.
Up to the terrorist events of September 11, 2001, it was the deadliest attack to occur on US soil.
Over 400 soldiers perished onboard the USS Oklahoma, one of four battleships sunk by Japanese torpedoes, including Jacobson.
Any found bodies were interred at a military cemetery in Hawaii once the ship was refloated two years later.
Later, but mostly ineffectively, an attempt was made to identify the remains using dental records.
The adoption of increasingly sophisticated identifying techniques, such DNA matching, was the subject of a new campaign that was introduced in 2003 and then again in 2015.
According to the US defense organization in charge of the effort, 361 people have been correctly identified among the USS Oklahoma remains since 2003, including Bert Jacobson’s remains in 2019.
The Covid epidemic had earlier forced the postponement of his funeral in Arlington National Cemetery, which is located across the Potomac from Washington.
