Sailor killed at Pearl Harbor identified, gets funeral

HONOLULU — A sailor killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor has been buried with full military honors nearly 75 years later.

Petty Officer 1st Class Vernon Luke, a machinist’s mate, of Green Bay, Wis., was laid to rest at a veterans cemetery Wednesday in Honolulu. The 43-year-old died when Japanese planes bombed the USS Oklahoma on Dec. 7, 1941.

After World War II, he was buried as an “unknown” along with nearly 400 other unidentified sailors and Marines from the battleship.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency last year dug up the remains, saying advances in forensic science and technology had made identification more feasible. It disinterred 61 caskets at 45 grave sites at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, in an extinct volcanic crater commonly known as Punchbowl. Many coffins contained comingled remains of multiple people.

Luke was among the first five from the Oklahoma who was identified and whose family has been notified, agency spokeswoman Lt. Col. Holly Slaughter said. He is the first of the newly identified to be reburied, she said.

A second sailor will be reburied at Punchbowl on March 18. Ensign Lewis Stockdale of Anaconda, Mont., was 27 when he was killed in the Pearl Harbor attack. Altogether, 429 onboard the Oklahoma were killed. Only 35 were identified in the years immediately after. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency expects to identify 80 percent of the Oklahoma unknown within five years.