Single tooth helps ID
body from ’41 attackA sailor long buried at Punchbowl
will go home to Missouri
It was just before 8 on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, and Payton L. Vanderpool Jr., a farm boy from Missouri, was on duty stoking wood into a boiler on a pier in Pearl Harbor.
When the first wave of Japanese planes flew over, Vanderpool, 22, was cut down by heavy machine gun fire, said Lawrence McNabb, a crew mate on the USS Pennsylvania.
"They put him into an ambulance, and that was the last anybody ever saw of him. He never made it to the hospital," said Vanderpool's youngest sister, Thelma Blanton, 76, who learned what little she could from those who served with her brother.
But yesterday, Navy officials told Blanton her missing brother has been buried for about 60 years at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl in a grave marked "unknown."
Blanton said Vanderpool's name is on the walls of the Garden Court of the Missing. A monument in the court, which honors the unidentified soldiers, says their "earthly resting place is known only to God."
"We're still in shock that he's been found," said Blanton, who was 15 when her brother was killed. "This is a miracle I never thought would happen."
Vanderpool, who had two brothers and eight sisters, will be buried next to his parents in Braymer, Mo., in a ceremony Dec. 7.
"I've read about closure and never really thought much of it," said Blanton, who lives in Kansas City, Kan. "But now I understand what closure is."
McNabb, now 83 and living in Fresno, Calif., said he and Vanderpool became fast friends as the only Midwesterners among men from the East Coast aboard the Pennsylvania.
"It was peacetime," said McNabb, "but I guess in the back of our minds, we knew war was coming."
McNabb said at the time of the bombing, the Pennsylvania was in dry dock. He said the last time he saw Vanderpool, it was 4 a.m. and he was coming off night patrol duty. McNabb said Vanderpool was coming to work a four-hour shift loading the boiler.
"I knew he was out on that dock. And it was hit badly," said McNabb.
Vanderpool was identified with the help of Ray Emory, 82, of Kahala, who served at Pearl Harbor and is the chief historian of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association.
For the past decade, Emory has been on a crusade to identify the unknown who died at Pearl.
Emory said he got angry when he visited Punchbowl years ago "and they couldn't tell me where the Pearl Harbor guys were buried. They screwed up so much back then."
Emory said he works from files of unknown men and personnel files. In Vanderpool's case, he matched a missing incisor tooth in dental records to the unknown file. He contacted the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command at Hickam Air Force Base.
On June 18, Vanderpool's remains were disinterred, examined, and the identification was confirmed recently through dental records, said Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara, a spokesman for the command.
