Remains of sailor killed at Pearl Harbor coming home to Kansas – Honolulu, Hawaii

Honolulu, Hawaii 2021-09-03 05:07:06 –

Walter S. Belt, Jr.-Photo courtesy of Defense POWs / MIA Accounting Bureau

Washington-Defense POW / MIA Accounting Office (DPAA) accounts for 25-year-old Walter S. Belt Jr., a Navy firefighter in Cleveland, Kansas, who was killed during World War II on March 3, 2021. Announced.

On December 7, 1941, a belt was assigned when the USS Oklahoma battleship moored on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor was attacked by a Japanese aircraft. USS Oklahoma was immediately capsized after being attacked by multiple torpedoes. The attack on the ship killed 429 crew members, including the belt.

From December 1941 to June 1944, Navy personnel recovered the bodies of the deceased crew members and were subsequently buried in the Halawa and Nuuanu cemeteries.

In September 1947, members of the U.S. Cemetery Registration Service (AGRS) dismantled the remains of U.S. victims from two graveyards in Schofield Barracks, tasked with recovering and identifying Americans who died in the Pacific War. Transferred to the Central Identification Laboratory. At that time, laboratory staff could only confirm the identities of 35 men from USS Oklahoma. The AGRS then buried an unidentified body in section 46 of the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP), known as Honolulu’s Punchbowl. In October 1949, the Military Commission classified those who could not be identified as irreparable, including the belt.

Between June and November 2015, DPAA personnel unearthed USS Oklahoma Unknown from the Punch Bowl for analysis.

To identify the remains of the belt, DPAA scientists used dental and anthropological analysis. In addition, scientists at the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and autosomal DNA (auSTR) analysis.

Belt’s name is recorded on the missing wall of Punchbowl, along with others who went missing in World War II. A rosette is placed next to his name to indicate that he has been described.

Belt will be buried in Ellsworth, Kansas on October 9, 2021.

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