Three-quarters of a century after he was killed during the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the remains of a young Navy sailor finally are heading home to Kansas.
(FOX)- Lewis Lowell Wagoner was a 20-year-old Navy seaman second class when he perished and was declared missing after the Dec. 7, 1941, attack that propelled the United States into World War II.
Wagoner was aboard the USS Oklahoma when that battleship, along with other U.S. warships, was doomed by torpedoes while helplessly moored in Pearl Harbor.
Wagoner’s body, unidentified at the time, eventually was recovered, along with several hundred fellow shipmates. All of them were buried as “unknowns” in a Hawaii cemetery.
But last year, the U.S. military dug up the mass graves and began a painstaking push by special military laboratories to put names to the remains, using pre-war dental records and modern advances in DNA testing.
Wagoner’s remains are to be flown Friday to Wichita, Kansas, a day before a memorial service and interment with military honors at a family plot in Harvey County’s Whitewater Cemetery.
A bronze grave marker — noting the Missouri-born serviceman’s status as a Purple Heart recipient — already awaits him in a row of final resting places for three of his seven brothers. Just one brother, 87-year-old Carl Wagoner of Syracuse, Utah, is still living.
(Photo Credit: Ron Wagoner via AP)