Remains Of US Navy Sailor Killed In The Pearl Harbor Attack Identified After 80+ Years

Officials reported this week that a US Navy man killed in the WWII attack on Pearl Harbor has been identified, over 80 years after his death. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (abbreviated the DPAA) revealed in a news on Monday that Stanley C. Galaszewski, 29, the Navy Seaman 2nd Class originally from Steubenville in Ohio, was killed on 7 December 1941, along with more than 100 crewmates. On 23 May 2022, his remains were eventually identified.

Galaszewski was assigned to the USS California, a battleship that was stationed at Pearl Harbor and was one of the first vessels to be hit by torpedoes when the Japanese aircraft attacked the U.S. naval base.

Per the Naval History and Heritage Command, the battleship was hit by numerous torpedoes and then a bomb. The USS California is known to have flooded since a pile of burning oil flowed toward her down “Battleship Row” — where the US Navy was stationed in the bay off the shore of Ford Island — the ship caught fire and the crew members abandoned the ship. The ship was moored near Ford Island, where it eventually sank and was raised nearly a year later.

During the Pearl Harbor attack, 100+ officers and crew members on the USS California were killed while in action, including Galaszewski. His bones, however, were not among those that were collected by the US Navy personnel between December 1941 and April 1942 and placed in the Nu’uanu and Halawa military cemeteries.

According to DPAA, after the war, US military crews endeavored to recover and identify the remains of service members who lost their lives in the Pacific. The American Graves Registration Service, at the time, exhumed the remains of the US service members from the Nu’uanu and Halawa cemeteries and moved them to a laboratory, where the identities of 39 sailors from the USS California were reportedly verified. The unidentified remains were laid to rest at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, better known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu, and a military board further certified 25 unknown sets of remains as non-recoverable in 1949.

Galaszewski’s remains were among those that could not be recovered, but contemporary DNA testing permitted the officials to successfully identify them several decades later, as 25 sets of remains were recovered.

Galaszewski’s name is now on the “Walls of the Missing” at the Punchbowl memorial site, with the names of others still missing from the WWII. Besides, a rosette will be placed above his name to indicate that he has been found. Galaszewski will be laid to rest on 3 November at Steubenville, Ohio.

References: Associate Press, CBS News

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