Battleship West Virginia

Eighty-one years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the identification of fallen US sailors is ongoing. Recently, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency identified the remains of two sailors missing in action since Dec. 7, 1941. 

Petty Ofc. 2nd Class Claude Ralph Garcia died at age 25 while serving as a ship fitter aboard the USS West Virginia when Japanese forces attacked the U.S. naval base near Honolulu. Petty Ofc. 1st Class Keith Warren Tipsword, died at age 27, on the same ship.

NBC News reports that the remains of Garcia and Tipsword had been buried with other unidentified bodies from the battleship USS West Virginia at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also known as Punchbowl Cemetery, the accounting agency said in a news release.

During the attack on Pearl Harbor, bombs and torpedoes sunk the ship, killing 106 crew members, the agency said. A total of 2,403 people died in the attack.

Many of the USS West Virginia casualties were identified in a mass disinterment six years after the attack. Many others were reburied until 2017, when 35 caskets were exhumed and sent to a laboratory for identification using methods such as mitochondrial DNA, dental analysis, anthropological analysis and material evidence, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

 Of the original 106 casualties, 25 had been unidentified as of 2016, it said. Others who have been ID’d recently include Navy fireman Harold K. Costill, who died at age 18, and Seaman John R. Melton, who died at 23.

Almost 2,000 deceased members of the U.S. military have been identified since the efforts began in the 1970s, the agency said.

“At DPAA, it is our sacred duty to find, account for, and bring home these service members who made the ultimate sacrifice,” Sgt. 1st Class Sean Everette, a spokesperson for the agency, told the VC Star.

Also aboard the West Virginia during the attack on December 7, 1942, was Dorie Miller.  Miller was a Navy Messman who showed incredible courage under fire during the attack. He was the first African American to be awarded the Navy Cross, the third highest honor awarded by the U.S. Navy at the time. In January of 2020, the US Navy officially named the newest of the future Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers after Doris “Dorie” Miller.