ATLANTA — A Georgia WWII sailor who died in the attacks on Pearl Harbor has been accounted for after nearly 80 years.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said in a release Friday that Navy Boilermaker 1st Class William E. Blanchard, a 24-year-old native of Tignall, Ga. at the time of his death, had been accounted for in January.
Blanchard was aboard the USS Oklahoma when it was attacked in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. He was among 429 of the ship's crewmen who died in the attack.
DPAA said Blanchard was originally among scores of the crew that the military could not identify, and he was buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also known as the Punchbowl, in Hawaii.
In 2015, DPAA began exhuming USS Oklahoma crewmen who had never been identified.
"To identify Blanchard’s remains, scientists from DPAA used dental and anthropological analysis. Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), Y chromosome DNA (Y-STR), and autosomal DNA (auSTR) analysis," DPAA said. "Blanchard’s name is recorded on the Courts of the Missing at the Punchbowl, along with the others who are missing from WWII. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for."
The agency said Blanchard would be buried on June 7 in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.