81st Anniversary of Pearl Harbor: Herbert Jacobson-- Part 2

Continued from my RoadDog's RoadLog blog.

Herbert Jacobson's remains weren't identified until late 2019 after years of efforts by both the family and military DNA experts.  A burial originally scheduled for spring 2020 was delayed because of the pandemic.

In the meantime, more of Jacobson's remains were identified so the family will have more of him to bury.

"I just wish my mother and especially my grandmother could be around to see this," McDonald said.  "My grandmother would still be sad that she lost her oldest boy, but at least there would be a means of closure."

McDonald's late mother, Norma, was Jacobson's sister.  Their parents, George and Mabel Jacobson, met during World War I.  Like Herbert Jacobson, known to the family as "Bert," George Jacobson was a sailor in the U.S. Navy.  Mabel worked as a barmaid when they met.

The two were married on December 7, 1919, and Mabel named her firstborn son after her beloved brother, Herbert, who died at a young age.

Continued in my Saw the Elephant:  Civil War blog.

Project Oklahoma to Identify USS Oklahoma Unknowns-- Part 2

Continued from my Saw the Elephant: Civil War blog.

Bud Hannon's remains were unknown along with so many of his shipmates and were buried in graves marked Unknowns.  However, in 2015, it was decided that would have to be corrected.  Project Oklahoma began which was by and large reliant on DNA testing.

Said Carrie Legarde, a project lead for Project Oklahoma: "For a large project like this, where the remains are reallly commingled, we had to do a lot of DNA testing.  And so that's where we need family members involvement, because we need a DNA reference sample from the family that we can compare  to the remains."

The project takes time and involves labs across the country.  For this project, initial processing was done at  the defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency lab at the Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam Field, then, further analysis at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, and DNA testing at the Armed Forces Laboratory at Dover, Delaware.

"And they provide us thatn information to help us kind of piece together the remains basically, it's kind of like a big puzzle that we have to put together and sort out," Legarde said.  "And, once we can figure out which remains go together,  we can figure out who they belong to."

101-Year-Old USS Oklahoma Pearl Harbor Survivor Returns: David Russell

Continued from my Saw the Elephant:  Civil War blog.

Today, I will be posting about Pearl Harbor in all but one of my blogs.

David Russell is traveling to Pearl Harbor with the Best Defense  Foundation, a nonprofit founded by former NFL  linebacker Donnie Edwards that helps World War II veterans visit  their old battlefields.

"Those darn torpedoes, they just kept hitting us and kept hitting us.  I thought they'd never stop.  That ship was dancing around."

He remembers clambering over and around toppled lockers while the battleship slowly rolled over. "You had to walk sort of sideways."

Once he got to the main deck, he crawled over the ship's side and eyed the battleship USS Maryland moored alongside his ship.  He didn't want to swim over to it because leaking oil had caught fire in the water.  Jumping, he was able to catch a rope hanging from the Maryland  and escaped to that battleship without injury.

He then helped pass ammunition to the Maryland's anti-aircraft guns for the rest of the attack.

--Old B-Runner