U.S. Navy Electrician’s Mate 2nd Class Leaman R. Dill.Photo: courtesy black hills funeral home
Leaman, then a 25-year-old from Huron, South Dakota, was one of 429 crewmen who died after the ship sustained multiple torpedo hits and capsized, the outlet reported.
The bodies remained at the cemetery for decades until 2015 when officials withthe Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agencybegan exhuming them for DNA analysis.
Eventually, through the use of anthropological analysis and mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome DNA analysis, scientists were able to identify Leaman’s remains and reunite his body with his two surviving family members, niece Marilynn Axt and nephew David Dill.
On Monday, 80 years after Leaman’s death, Marilynn and David had the chance to finally lay their uncle to rest at Black Hills National Cemetery near Sturgis, according to theJournal.
“I never thought it would happen,” Axt told the outlet. “We wish our father [Leaman’s brother] could have seen it and been present for it. It’s just been an incredible journey that we never thought we would see.”
“He’s back home in South Dakota,” David added to the local journal.
It was a lengthy process to get to that moment, beginning nearly eight years after Pearl Harbor in October 1949, when a military board classified the victims who could not be identified as non-recoverable, according to theJournal.
In June 2015, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency began the exhumation process at the Honolulu cemetery, which lasted until November 2015, the outlet reported.
During that process, Leaman’s family said they pitched in to help identify the fallen sailor, who enlisted in the U.S. Navy at a recruiting station in Deadwood and later trained at a camp near Wind Cave National Park before being assigned to the U.S.S. Oklahoma.
“I have a Christmas card that my parents received from him. It was mailed on Dec. 6, 1941,” Axt told theJournal. “I still have that and I have the telegrams that reported he was missing in action, and then three months later another telegram that said he was presumed dead.”
“Several years ago, my two brothers sent their DNA in, and, evidently, they traced it more to the maternal side of the family, and it ended up coming to me,” she added. “The Navy has been amazing to work with and has been so helpful. It’s been stressful and tearful, but it’s been quite a journey.”
Once they confirmed the remains belonged to Leaman, his body was transported back to South Dakota, where he was buried beneath his already-standing white tombstone at the Black Hills National Cemetery.
Leaman also received military rites during Monday’s service at the cemetery, his family told theJournal.
“I came in here once with my mom and dad because there is a marker for Leaman that was put in there in about 1959, I believe,” David explained to the outlet. “I’ve stopped here a couple of other times and I was just in here in April and visited his headstone for a few minutes and moved on up the road, not knowing that any of this was going to happen. So, this is a wonderful, wonderful thing.”
Leaman’s name was recorded on the Walls of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, besides others who were also unaccounted for in World War II, but will now have a rosette placed next to his name to indicate he has been located, according to theJournal.
This isn’t the first instance where DNA analysis has helped officials identify missing U.S. military personnel from Pearl Harbor 80 years later.
source: people.com
