Sailor identified

Albany native Leonard Smith was on Oklahoma during Japanese surprise attack

Albany native was on Oklahoma during Pearl Harbor attack.

A petty officer killed during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor has finally been identified.

Navy Metalsmith 1st class Leonard F. Smith, 29, of Albany, was on the USS Oklahoma when it sank on Dec. 7, 1941.

The ship went down less than 12 minutes into the surprise attack. Japanese pilots targeted the USS Oklahoma at the start of the attack, hitting it with numerous torpedoes.

Although the USS Oklahoma was moored in the harbor, it was not an easy task to escape the sinking ship while it was under attack. Many crewmen were trapped inside the hull. Others had to jump 50 feet into the water — which was burning hot and covered in oil slicks. Despite the daylight, it was so dark inside the ship that many sailors gave their lives guiding others out.

Some survived the initial bombardment and the sinking of the ship, but were trapped inside. They lived in flooded conditions for up to two days while Navy rescue crews drilled holes in the hull. They were able to rescue 32 people that way. In total, more than 500 people survived the attack.

But Smith, and 428 other sailors and Marines, did not make it.

Smith enlisted in Pennsylvania, but was living with his wife, Doris, in Long

Beach, California before the war, according to military records. He is now listed as having family in Albany.

The Navy recovered the bodies of all 429 people lost on the USS Oklahoma, but it took two and a half years and most of them could not be identified. They were all temporarily buried in Hawaii.

Those remains were first disinterred in 1947 in an effort to identify each person. But the remains of 394 people were buried as “unknowns,” with a list of every person’s name nearby.

In 2015, all those remains were exhumed again in an effort to identify them using modern DNA analysis. That’s what led to Smith’s identification.

More than half of the sailors and

Marines from the USS Oklahoma have now been identified and sent home to be buried by their families.

Smith was identified on April 16, 2020, and his family was

called, said Defense POW/MIA

Accounting Agency spokesman Sean Everette.

But due to restrictions on travel and gathering during the pandemic, the Navy Casualty Office was unable to meet with the family in person until recently.

“That (phone call) notification is just to let them know he’s been accounted for. They don’t get the full breadth of information at that time,” Everette said.

That is always done in person, he said. That happened at the end of June.

The family has asked to not be contacted by the media.

They have also declined a funeral. Smith’s remains will be cremated on Sept. 1.