Tue, Dec 09, 2003
Missing Hero From WWII Identified
The extraordinary aerial attack that
made Pearl Harbor a focal point for one of the largest conflcits
the world has ever known, is still giving up its dead. A sailor
missing in action from the attack on Pearl Harbor has been
identified and returned to his family for burial.
He is Fireman Second Class Payton L. Vanderpool, Jr., of
Cowgill, Missouri.
Vanderpool was aboard the USS Pennsylvania in dry dock at Pearl
Harbor when the December 7, 1941 attack began. The ship was hit by
a Japanese bomb that penetrated the main deck and detonated below
deck. It was further damaged when a nearby destroyer, the USS
Downes, exploded. More than 50 sailors and marines died on the USS
Pennsylvania. Vanderpool was among six still missing after the
attack.
In the days following the attack, burial details began to inter
the dead, but his name does not appear on any cemetery burial
ledgers. He was presumed to have been killed in action and a
military review board declared his remains to be
non-recoverable.
On December 9, 1941, the remains of an "unknown" sailor from the
Pearl Harbor attack were interred at the Halawa Naval Cemetery on
Oahu. In September 1947 these remains were disinterred and examined
by the staff at the Central Identification Laboratory, but they
were unable to establish identification. They were reburied at the
National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, or Punchbowl, in
1949.
In 2001 the laboratory obtained records that suggested these
remains could be associated with an unknown sailor from the USS
Pennsylvania. The remains were exhumed in June 2003 and identified
in September through skeletal analysis and dental records.
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