Veteran lauded for effort to identify Pearl Harbor war dead

For more than 25 years, Pearl Harbor survivor Ray Emory’s vocation has been to secure greater recognition for the men who died on Dec. 7, 1941, and are buried as “unknowns” at Punchbowl cemetery.

His latest mission: the identification of the unknown service member who was the first recorded burial from the Day of Infamy.

“I’ve been working on this for quite a while,” said the 96-year-old Emory.

Navy burial records indicate case “X-1 Nuuanu” was a fatality at Pearl Harbor who was initially buried at Nuuanu Naval Cemetery, which is part of Oahu Cemetery, and subsequently transferred to grave P-640 at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

Emory knows this because he has copies of the burial records. The deceased man was 5 feet 4-1/4 inches tall, weighed 122 pounds and was 24 to 26, he said.

“I’ve got a pretty good idea” who it is, Emory said, but that’s why he’s pushing for disinterment — so a positive ID can be made.

Poring over and cross-referencing military medical and burial records has become part of daily life for Emory, whose mission is to gain identification of, and therefore greater respect for, Pearl Harbor sailors and Marines whose individual sacrifices are hidden beneath anonymous graves.

The quest has filled a room at his Kahala home with files and charts that he calls his “war room.”

Some governmental agencies used to push back against the sometimes cantankerous former Navy chief petty officer and his goal to update Punchbowl unknown graves with ship information or seek disinterment when he provided identifying information.

But now they acknowledge his role in helping bring greater awareness to the sacrifices made 76 years ago.

The University of Washington at a Veterans Day ceremony today is giving Emory its Distinguished Alumni Veteran Award.

“Ray’s persevering efforts in helping to identify the unknowns buried at Punchbowl have been his most fervent act of servitude to his fellow veterans,” said Jessie Higa, a local historian who has worked with Emory.

On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Emory was on his ship, the light cruiser USS Honolulu, and firing back at enemy planes with a .50-caliber machine gun at one of the best sighting spots in the harbor.

He remembers one Japanese plane that was hit by something that stopped it in midair and caused it to explode as its prop kept spinning through the air.

He still has the shell casing from the first round he fired. “Don’t ask me why I even bent over and picked it up off the deck to begin with,” he said with a laugh.

Decades later, using military records, Emory determined the identity of 27 men killed on the USS Oklahoma who were buried as unknowns at Punchbowl. In 2003 a casket was disinterred that contained commingled remains.

The Pentagon positively identified five men. But incomplete sets of bones of more than 100 others also were found, complicating further identifications until all the remains were recovered.

In 2015 the Pentagon announced that it was taking the unprecedented step of exhuming all of the Oklahoma’s remaining 388 crew members.

In a Distinguished Public Service Award, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, which searches for, recovers and identifies missing American war dead, said, “Without Mr. Emory’s efforts on behalf of his fellow sailors, their families and the nation, the USS Oklahoma unknowns might still be buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.”

Emory proposed disinterments that also led to identifications from the USS Curtiss, Pennsylvania and Sicard, the agency said.

Next up for disinterment and identification are unknowns from the USS California. The agency said the X-1 Nuuanu case is associated with that battleship.

One of the identified Oklahoma sailors, 18-year-old Robert Monroe Temple, was reburied in July at Punchbowl with new identifying information. His brother, Jim, now 88, came in from O’Fallon, Mo., for the internment.

“Mr. Emory, who got this started, I thank him dearly,” Temple said.