4/2/2018
Hero comes home 77 years later
A South Dakota sailor who died in the Pearl Harbor attack will be buried in his hometown this week.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency says the remains of Navy Water Tender 2nd Class Porter Rich of Lake Preston are being returned to his family for burial with full military honors March 31. A memorial service will be held at 2:00 pm at the Lake Preston High School Gymnasium.
The 27-year-old Rich was assigned to the battleship USS Oklahoma, which was moored at Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, when the ship was attacked by Japanese aircraft on Dec. 7, 1941. The attack on the ship resulted in the deaths of 429 crewmen, including Rich.
From December 1941 to June 1944, Navy personnel recovered the remains of the deceased crew, which were subsequently interred in the Halawa and Nu’uanu Cemeteries.
In September 1947, tasked with recovering and iden-tifying fallen U.S. personnel in the Pacific Theater, mem-bers of the American Graves Registration Service (AGRS) disinterred the remains of U.S. casualties from the two cemeteries and transferred them to the Central Identification Laboratory at Schofield Barracks. The labor-atory staff was only able to confirm the identifications of 35 men from the USS Oklahoma at that time. The AGRS subsequently buried the unidentified remains in 46 plots at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP), known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu. In October 1949, a military board classified those who could not be identified as non-recoverable, including Rich.
In April 2015, the Deputy Secretary of Defense issued a policy memorandum directing the disinterment of unknowns associated with the USS Oklahoma. On June 15, 2015, DPAA personnel began exhuming the remains from the NMCP for analysis.
To identify Rich’s remains, scientists from DPAA and the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial (mtDNA) analysis, which matched his family, as well as circumstantial evidence and labora-tory analysis, to include dental comparisons and anthropological analysis, which matched his records.
For additional information on the Defense Department’s mission to account for Americans who went missing while serving our country, visit the DPAA website at www.dpaa.mil, find us on social media at www.facebook.com/dodpaa or call (703) 699-1420.
Article Credit: SD Dept. of Veterans Affairs
