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Sailor killed at Pearl Harbor identified after seven decades

By Danielle Haynes
Navy Fireman 3rd Class Willard I. Lawson died when a torpedo struck the USS Oklahoma, causing it to capsize. File Photo courtesy of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency
Navy Fireman 3rd Class Willard I. Lawson died when a torpedo struck the USS Oklahoma, causing it to capsize. File Photo courtesy of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency

March 11 (UPI) -- Scientists identified the remains of a 25-year-old sailor who died more than seven decades ago during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Defense Department announced Monday.

Navy Fireman 3rd Class Willard I. Lawson, a native of Butler County, Ohio, died Dec. 7, 1941, aboard the USS Oklahoma, which capsized after multiple torpedo hits.

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The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency named Lawson as part of a renewed effort to identify hundreds of sailors and Marines killed during the Pearl Harbor attack in Hawaii and buried in unnamed graves. The DPAA began exhuming the remains in 2015 from the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also known as the Punchbowl.

Scientists used dental and anthropological analysis, circumstantial and material evidence and mitochondrial DNA analysis to identify Lawson's remains.

The DPAA said Lawson will be reburied April 27 in Madison, Ind. His name appears on the Wall of the Missing at the Punchbowl, where a rosette will be etched next to his name to indicate his identification.

More than 2,400 people were killed in the Pearl Harbor attack that brought the United States into World War II.

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