Home at last: USS Oklahoma sailor finally identified, laid to rest in St. Louis

After greater than 80 years away from St. Louis, Paul Boemer lastly returned from Hawaii.

And Vince Boemer — who gently accepted the folded American flag that had coated his brother’s casket — was completely satisfied to welcome him again.

“He was a superb man,” Boemer mentioned. “He was a superb older brother.”

Earlier this month, Paul Boemer was laid to relaxation at Jefferson Barracks Nationwide Cemetery, in a ceremony scored by the enjoying of faucets and a 21-gun salute. Household, associates, a Navy honor guard in gown whites and several other dozen Freedom Rider veterans stood with reverence on a sunny, humid St. Louis day.

“It’s a terrific honor to be a part of this,” mentioned Vince Boemer, who quickly will flip 98. “It’s fantastic to see the U.S. authorities go to those lengths to honor its veterans.”

To make sure, Paul Boemer didn’t plan to be gone so lengthy when he enlisted within the Navy in late 1938.

After rising up in south St. Louis, the eighth of 10 kids, and graduating from Cleveland Excessive College, the lanky 18-year-old selected a stint within the army.

He accomplished fundamental coaching, and the Navy assigned the brand new coxswain — a sailor who helps steer a ship — to the united statesOklahoma. So Boemer boarded a troop transport in Norfolk, Virginia, and sailed to the ship’s homeport of Ford Island at Pearl Harbor.

That’s the place Boemer was stationed in 1939 — and on Dec. 7, 1941.

On that day, Japan launched a shock assault on the U.S. Pacific Fleet; the united statesOklahoma was struck by two torpedoes. The battleship rapidly capsized, claiming the lives of 429 crewmen.

Paul Boemer was a month shy of turning 22.

In all, 2,403 U.S. personnel died that Sunday morning at Pearl Harbor and 19 vessels had been destroyed or broken.

However due to “these lengths” taken by the U.S. authorities, Vince Boemer lastly received to see his huge brother buried in his hometown.

‘IT’S FOR THE FAMILIES’

The hassle started with the graves of the unknown USS Oklahoma useless who had been interred for many years in “The Punchbowl.”

Formally referred to as the Nationwide Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Punchbowl was the place 389 unidentified sailors from the united statesOklahoma had been buried, and the place they remained till 2015.

That yr, the federal authorities’s Protection POW/MIA Accounting Company initiated its “USS Oklahoma Venture.”

The venture was primarily based at Offutt Air Power Base in Nebraska and aimed to place names to as lots of the unknown crewmen as potential. In all, 355 of the 389 unknown sailors had been recognized.

The work — which venture chief Carrie LeGarde known as “overwhelming” and “rewarding” — has one easy purpose: “We attempt to give the dwelling solutions in regards to the useless,” she mentioned.

To try this, LeGarde mentioned 5 years had been spent on the painstaking, ugly work of cataloging stays.

A forensic anthropologist, LeGarde has labored for the Protection POW/MIA Accounting Company for 10 years and joined the united statesOklahoma Venture in 2019.

She conceded that the efforts weren’t for the squeamish.

LeGarde mentioned step one was to exhume the various caskets, open them, unwrap the stays and start sorting them.

“Each bone was documented and given a quantity after which entered right into a database,” she mentioned. Then, researchers went by means of all of the bones once more “to see which of them did, or didn’t, go collectively.”

“It got here right down to doing issues like separating (the bones of) left arms from proper arms,” she mentioned.

A most important a part of the venture was DNA testing, LeGarde mentioned, noting that arm and leg bones, skulls and pelvic bones supplied the perfect testing materials.

After these assessments had been carried out, the stays had been once more divided into teams primarily based on age, peak and race.

Whereas that work went on, the Navy Casualty Workplace contacted survivors of crewmen to ask for DNA samples to be able to make legitimate comparisons.

“That’s the crucial piece, the DNA pattern from a dwelling relative,” LeGarde mentioned.

So lastly, in September 2020, the optimistic identification of Paul Boemer was made, the Navy reported.

The Navy Casualty Workplace took over from there, contacting the Boemer household and beginning preparations to maneuver the physique again residence — an endeavor that culminated with the Might 11 service at Jefferson Barracks.

LeGarde mentioned these memorial companies are exactly what preserve her and her colleagues devoted to their job.

“I’d like to get an opportunity to satisfy the households,” she mentioned. “That’s why we do that, it’s for the households.”

To make sure, Vince Boemer felt lucky to be at his brother’s service. However he’s fortunate to be right here in any respect — for he has his personal struggle story to inform.

After graduating in 1943 from Cleveland Excessive, he joined the Military. Of 9 Boemer boys, six served within the army throughout World Battle II.

In 1945, whereas with the Military’s forty second Infantry “Rainbow” Division within the Philippines, his squad was ambushed and he was shot within the hip and aspect.

Boemer mentioned he needed to drag himself, half-conscious, into the thicket alongside the path to keep away from seize by the Japanese patrol.

He was not sure how lengthy he had laid bleeding within the bush, however 4 Filipino girls from a close-by village finally discovered him and carried him out of the jungle.

Even then, his ideas turned to his older brother.

“My greatest fear was getting phrase residence to my mother that I used to be alright,” he mentioned. “I understand how laborious (Paul’s) dying was on her. She’d handed out when she received the information and I didn’t need that to occur to her once more.”

‘I WANT THEM TO REMEMBER’

On the Might 11 service, Boemer sat subsequent to 2 outdated associates, making a tableau that’s rarer every passing day: three dwelling World Battle II veterans in a single place.

Dan and Edgar Krattli, brothers from Pine Garden, each served within the Navy. A submarine service veteran, Dan Krattli, 98, mentioned with a smile upon introduction, “I’m that one Navy veteran who by no means discovered to swim.”

The brothers didn’t meet Vince Boemer till after the struggle, once they had been all college students in 1946 at Principia School.

“I went from hell to heaven in a yr,” Vince Boemer mentioned. “With so many guys nonetheless within the service, the female-to-male ratio was about 8 to 1.”

Vince Boemer married his spouse, Jean, in 1955. Collectively for 67 years now, the couple has had three kids, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

And that line of descendants will sooner or later obtain the flag that Vince Boemer clutched at his brother’s service, and which now sits in a show case at his residence in City and Nation.

“I would like them to recollect,” Boemer mentioned as he appeared out throughout the nationwide cemetery’s orderly expanse. “And I would like my brother to relaxation within the radiance of God’s love.”