STOCKTON, Calif. — The remains of a U.S. Navy sailor from California who was killed in the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor have been identified, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced Friday.
Petty Officer 1st Class Charles E. Hudson, 39, of Stockton was assigned to the USS Oklahoma and died when the battleship moored at Ford Island was attacked by Japanese torpedo planes and quickly capsized.
A total of 429 crew members were killed. The Navy continued to recover remains until June 1944 and interred them in two cemeteries.
Unidentified remains were disinterred in 1947 but laboratory staff were only able to confirm the identities of 35 men from the Oklahoma and the unidentified were interred at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, known as the Punchbowl.
The unknowns were again exhumed in 2015 and Hudson’s remains were subjected to anthropological and DNA analysis.
The DPAA said Hudson was accounted for last December, but the announcement was not made until Friday because his family only recently received a full briefing.
Hudson’s remains will be buried in Honolulu on Sept. 10. His name on the Wall of the Missing at the Punchbowl will be marked with a rosette to indicate he has been accounted for.