A 43-year-old sailor who served in World War I, died in the Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7, 1941, and was listed as an “unknown” at Punchbowl cemetery, will be reburied there on Wednesday after an identification was made.

Petty Officer 1st Class Vernon T. Luke, a crew member on the USS Oklahoma, is the first to be buried after all 388 unknowns from the battleship were disinterred. His identification was announced Jan. 11. Most of the sailors and Marines were exhumed last year from Punchbowl, officially known as the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

The Oklahoma was hit by seven to nine Japanese torpedoes and rolled in the harbor, trapping more than 400 men inside, according to the National Park Service.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, with a lab in Hawaii, is trying to fulfill a congressional mandate to make 200 IDs a year, and the disinterments from the Oklahoma — as well as the recovery of other unknowns from Punchbowl — will help it reach that goal. The Pentagon agency searches for, recovers and identifies Americans missing from the nation’s past wars.

A new obituary published in the Green Bay (Wis.) Press-Gazette on Sunday said Luke was born in Green Bay on Aug. 22, 1898, and was the oldest of five children.

“At 17, his father signed him into the Army during World War I,” the obituary states. “He spent a year in the Army and seven years in the Navy during and after that war.”

Luke was married and operated a gas station in Turlock, Calif., when he was called to active duty as a naval reservist about 18 months prior to his death on Dec. 7, 1941.

The machinist’s mate will finally get his own grave marker at Punchbowl 74 years after his death.

The Navy is flying Luke’s niece, Lee Ann Michalske of Sturgeon Bay, Wis., to Hawaii for the burial, WBAY-TV in Green Bay reported.

“For my family to finally bury my uncle and know where he is and have a (grave marker) on him, it just, it just seems like that’s the way it should be. This is really personal and I think it will be a little more moving than I hope because I easily cry,” she told the station.

The funeral service, with full military honors, will be at 11:30 a.m. at Punchbowl.

To identify Luke, DPAA scientists used circumstantial evidence and laboratory analysis including dental comparisons to match Luke’s records, the military said.

The Defense Department in November recovered the last of the 388 crew members from Punchbowl. The exhumations had already begun with a casket unearthed in 2003 as a result of research by Pearl Harbor survivor Ray Emory, who manned a .50-caliber machine gun on the USS Honolulu.

Using military records, Emory determined the identities of 27 men killed on the Oklahoma. The Pentagon exhumed one casket and positively identified five men. But incomplete sets of bones of more than 100 other men also were found, complicating further identifications until all the remains were recovered.

The DPAA said the first five Oklahoma crew members to be more recently identified are: Luke; Chief Petty Officer Albert E. Hayden of Maryland; Ensign Lewis S. Stockdale of Montana; Seaman 2nd Class Dale F. Pearce of Kansas; and Chief Petty Officer Duff Gordon of Wisconsin.

Stockdale’s funeral will be March 18, also at Punchbowl. Hayden’s family will bury him in Maryland, the DPAA said. The other two families had yet to schedule burials, the agency said.