The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced Monday that they identified the remains of an American sailor who perished during the Pearl Harbor attack.
The DPAA said in a press release that they identified the sailor as Navy Fireman 1st Class Everett C. Titterington who served on the battleship USS Oklahoma on that fateful day on Dec. 7, 1941. (RELATED: USS Arizona Sailor Louis Conter Dies At 102)
USS Oklahoma Sailor Accounted For From World War II (Titterington, E.) > Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency > PressReleaseArticleView https://t.co/zwYpo8SUiW
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Japan’s attack on the USS Oklahoma killed 429 of its crew — including Titterington — and capsized the battleship, the press release read. In the aftermath of the attack, naval personnel recovered the remains of the deceased and interred them in cemeteries but were unable to identify a number of the bodies that they buried in 46 plots at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, DPAA said.
A military board ruled in Oct. 1949 that those who were not identifiable-which at the time included Titterington- would be classified as non-recoverable, the press release said. DPAA personnel began to exhume and test the unidentified remains belonging to the crew of the USS Oklahoma between June and November 2015, and finally identified the remains as Titterington on March 23, 2021, through DNA analysis, the press release observed.
Titterington is set to be buried in Bloomington, California on Sept. 5, DPAA said. “DPAA is grateful to the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of the Navy for their partnership in this mission,” the press release said.
Titterington was from Iowa, according to the DPAA. The USS Oklahoma was built in 1916, later capsized at Pearl Harbor and was salvaged in 1943, according to the U.S. Navy. The ship was decommissioned in 1944 and sold for scrap in 1946, the Navy said.