INDIANAPOLIS — The remains of a sailor from Indianapolis who died in the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II 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.
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.
Multiple torpedo hits caused the ship to quickly capsize. Gilbert was among 429 crewmen who were killed in the attack, 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 began recovering the remains of the USS Oklahoma's deceased crew members shortly after the Japanese attack through June 1944. The crew's remains were interred at two cemeteries.
Three years later, in September of 1947, those remains were exhumed and moved to the military's Central Identification Laboratory at Schofield Barracks on Oahu. Laboratory staff was only able to identify 35 men from the USS Oklahoma and the rest of the unidentified crew members' remains were later buried at the Punchbowl.
In October 1949, a military board classified those who could not be identified as non-recoverable, including Gilbert. They remained there until 2015, when DPAA said personnel exhumed the unidentified remains from the Punchbowl for additional analysis, and Gilbert's remains were identified in August 2020.
DPAA said his family only recently received their full briefing on his identification, which is why they waited until Tuesday to announce he had been identified.
