Remains of Folcroft Sailor Killed at Pearl Harbor at Last Come Home to Delaware County

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Navy Radioman 3rd Class Charles A. Montgomery
Image via pennlive.com.
Navy Radioman 3rd Class Charles A. Montgomery

The remains of a Folcroft sailor, Charles Montgomery, killed at Pearl Harbor in 1941, have been identified and have been returned to Drexel Hill for burial, writes Deb Kiner for pennlive.com.

Navy Radioman 3rd Class Charles A. Montgomery, 21, was accounted for on March 3, 2021, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said Aug. 30.

Montgomery was assigned to the battleship USS Oklahoma on Dec. 7, 1941, moored at Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, when the Japanese attacked.

The USS Oklahoma took multiple torpedo hits and quickly capsized. The attack led to the deaths of 429 crewmen, including Montgomery.

Remains of the deceased crew were recovered between December 1941 to June 1944 and interred in the Halawa and Nu’uanu Cemeteries.

The remains were disinterred in September 1947 to recover and identify U.S. service members, but only 35 men from the USS Oklahoma could be identified at the time.

The American Graves Registration Service buried the unidentified remains in 46 plots at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

In October 1949, a military board classified the unidentified as “non-recoverable”, including Montgomery.

In 2015, the unknown remains were exhumed and eventually identified through dental and anthropological analysis and Y chromosome DNA analysis.

Read more at pennlive.com about Charles A. Montgomery.

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This National Geographic video looks at another unknown casualty from the USS Oklahoma.

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