BARBERTON — The remains of an Ohio Navy Seaman, originally classified as non-recoverable, have been identified, according to a news release.
Navy Seaman 1st Class Buford H. Dyer, 19, of Barberton, Ohio was assigned to the battleship USS Oklahoma when the ship was attacked by Japanese aircraft during the attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941. The ship quickly capsized causing the deaths of Dyer and over 400 crewmen.
In 1947, the American Graves Registrations Service attempted to identify some of the men killed — they were only able to identify 35. The unidentified remains were buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu, according to the release.
In 2015, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency began reanalyzing the Punchbowl in an attempt to identify those classified as non-recoverable 66 years earlier.
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They were able to identify Dyer remains based on dental, anthropological, and chromosome DNA analysis, according to the release.
Dyer will be buried on April 11, 2022, in Seville, Ohio.
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