George Herbert of Fall River, Mass., was a gunner’s mate 1st class when he was killed during the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. (Navy Personnel Command Public Affairs)
(Tribune News Service) — A Fall River, Mass., sailor who was killed during the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 that prompted entry into World War II by the U.S. will be buried at a California veterans cemetery later this month.
George Herbert was aboard the USS Oklahoma when it was attacked by the Japanese military at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. A gunner’s mate 1st class, Herbert enlisted in the Navy on Jan. 7, 1940, when he was 35. As a gunner’s mate, Herbert took charge of guns and gun crews and was responsible for putting together and fixing ships’ guns and other small arms.
Herbert was among the more than 400 sailors killed in the attack, many of whom were unable to be identified at the time. From 1950 until 2015, the remains of 388 unidentified sailors and Marines were buried in 61 caskets in 45 graves at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, which is known as “Punchbowl,” according to the Navy Personnel Command Public Affairs office.
In 2015, their remains were exhumed and a growing number of sailors were identified over the next several years. Now, only 32 sailors killed in Pearl Harbor are unidentified. Sailors like Herbert were identified using DNA samples from surviving family members as a reference, which are then matched to DNA from those unaccounted for.
Herbert will be given a “dignified and proper burial” in the Northern California Veterans Cemetery in Igo, California, on May 30.
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