A U.S. Navy sailor, who was from Grayslake and was killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor over 80 years ago, was laid to rest Tuesday after his remains were recently identified.
Navy Fireman 3rd Class Herbert B. Jacobson, 21, of Grayslake, was killed during World War II.
Jacobson was assigned to the battleship USS Oklahoma, which was moored at Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, when the ship was attacked by Japanese aircraft on Dec. 7, 1941.
The USS Oklahoma sustained multiple torpedo hits, which caused it to quickly capsize, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
The attack on the ship resulted in the deaths of 429 crewmen, including Jacobson.
Navy personnel over the span of several years recovered the remains of the deceased crew, which were interred in the Halawa and Nu’uanu Cemeteries.
Members of the American Graves Registration Service (AGRS) disinterred the remains of U.S. casualties from the two cemeteries in September 1947 and transferred them to the Central Identification Laboratory at Schofield Barracks.
The AGRS was tasked with identifying fallen U.S. personnel, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said.
The laboratory staff was only able to confirm the identifications of 35 men from the USS Oklahoma at that time.
The AGRS buried the unidentified remains in 46 plots at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.
A military board in 1949 classified those who could not be identified as non-recoverable, including Jacobson.
DPAA personnel in 2015 exhumed the USS Oklahoma Unknowns from the Punchbowl for analysis.
Scientists from DPAA used dental and anthropological analysis to identify Jacobson, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said.
Scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosomal analysis. He was finally accounted for in October 2019.
Jacobson was supposed to be buried in May 2020 at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia but the pandemic delayed it.
“This has kind of been an unsolved mystery and it gives us closure to finally know what happened to Bert, where he is and that he’s being finally laid to rest after being listed as an unknown for so long,” said Brad McDonald, a nephew, told the Associated Press.