Remains of Indiana sailor killed in Pearl Harbor attack ID'd

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - The remains of a sailor from Indianapolis who died in the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor have been identified by U.S. military scientists.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced Tuesday that Navy Fire Controlman 2nd Class George Gilbert's remains were identified through dental, anthropological and mitochondrial DNA analysis, WXIN-TV reported.

The federal agency said Gilbert, 20, was assigned to the battleship USS Oklahoma when it was attacked by Japanese aircraft on Dec. 7, 1941, while moored at Pearl Harbor's Ford Island.

The ship capsized and 429 crewmen were killed, including Gilbert, DPAA said.

Gilbert will be reinterred on June 6 at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also known as the Punchbowl. A rosette will be placed next to his name on the Walls of the Missing at the Punchbowl to indicate he has been accounted for.

Navy personnel recovered the remains of the USS Oklahoma's deceased crew members between shortly after the Japanese attack and June 1944 and they were interred at two cemeteries.

Those remains were exhumed in September 1947 and moved the military's Central Identification Laboratory at Schofield Barracks on Oahu. Laboratory staff confirmed the identifications of 35 men from the USS Oklahoma before the unidentified crew members' remains were later buried at the Punchbowl.

DPAA said that between June and November 2015, personnel exhumed those remains from the Punchbowl for additional analysis, and Gilbert's remains were identified in August 2020.