The USS North Carolina (BB-55) My all-time favorite warship. As an elementary school student in North Carolina, I donated nickels and dimes to save this ship back in the early sixties.

Monday, January 26, 2015

Pearl Harbor Survivor Helps Identify Unknown Dead

From the Dec. 6, 2012, Port Clinton (Ohio) News Herald by Audrey McAvoy, AP.

Ray Emory, 91, couldn't accept the fact that nearly 25% of the Pearl Harbor dead were unidentified.

He survived the attack, and, using old documents, badgered the government into relabeling more than 300 gravestones of these men with the name of the ship they were on that day.  He has lobbied to have forensic experts unearth the remains and examine them.

Emory first learned of the unidentified twenty years ago when he attended the 50th anniversary commemoration.  The bodies of the Pearl Harbor dead are scattered around the Punch Bowl National Cemetery in Oahu.

He found one 1941 Navy record noting that one burned body was found floating in the harbor, wearing shorts with the name "Livingston" on them.  There were only two men at Pearl Harbor with that last name and one of them is accounted for, so it must be the other.

His body was exhumed and found to be Alfred Livingston, 23, a fireman first class on the USS Oklahoma.

--GreGen


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