CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM Servicemen brought the casket with the remains of Apprentice Seaman Thomas Hembree yesterday to be reburied at the National Cemetery of the Pacific. Hembree, who was killed on Dec. 7, 1941, had been buried in a grave at Punchbowl marked "unknown."

ID’d ‘unknown’
gets hero's burial

Family members of Thomas
Hembree gather to remember
the lost WWII sailor

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By Gregg K. Kakesako
gkakesako@starbulletin.com

Seaman Apprentice Thomas Hembree, killed more than six decades ago during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, was honored yesterday by family members at a Punchbowl burial ceremony with full military honors.

Hembree is the first and only of the Pearl Harbor "unknowns" buried at the National Cemetery of the Pacific to have been identified and reburied. He was a 17-year-old from Kennewick, Wash., serving on the USS Curtiss when he died during the 1941 attack.

Hembree's niece Beth LaRosa, from Seattle, said of yesterday's service, "it was both a family reunion as well as a funeral for Uncle Tommy."

None of the 17 family members at the special burial ceremony knew Hembree, who needed his mother's approval to enlist in the Navy in 1941 because he was underage. In fact, many of them had never met each other until this week.

Seaman Apprentice Thomas Hembree

At the close of the 35-minute ceremony, LaRosa said: "Uncle Tommy has not died in vain. We would have not gotten to know each other without this identification process."

Marion Price, another niece, said the burial brings closure. "It's over and we're closing ... at the same time it's a beginning."

Price, who lives in California, had never met LaRosa, her cousin, until her aunt tried to find out where her nephew was buried. Ever since the quest to verify Hembree's identity began 12 years ago, the two have kept in close contact.

Price, the eldest of the cousins, was only three when Hembree was killed.

Twenty-one sailors from the USS Curtiss died in the attack. All but two, Hembree and Seaman 1st Class Wilson Rice, were accounted for. They are now believed to have been buried in a common grave at Punchbowl in 1949 under a headstone marked "unknown."

CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM Capt. Don Wilson presented the flag to Thomas Hembree's nieces Beth LaRosa, left, and Marion Price.

Hembree's sister, Helen Braidwood, visited Punchbowl 30 years later looking for his gravesite, but was told that he had been buried at sea.

In 1989 Braidwood met Ray Emory, a Pearl Harbor survivor, who had spent most of his life cataloging the 776 Pearl Harbor victims who were buried at Punchbowl.

Using official military records Emory pinpointed what he believed was Hembree and Rice's grave. In January 2001, forensic specialists from the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory exhumed two graves of Pearl Harbor casualties and two of Korean War unknowns for DNA testing.

In December 2000, Price said she was asked for a blood sample for the DNA test. That proved inconclusive, so the Army turned to dental records and examining the skeletal remains to see if they were a match with Hembree's age, race, sex and stature. Last Thanksgiving, Price was informed that the Army lab was positive that one set of remains belonged to Hembree.

Yesterday with family members from California, Washington and Florida looking on, Hembree was returned to the same grave -- but this time with a headstone that bears his name, rank, birth date, ship and date of his death. Photos of family members also were placed in Hembree's casket.