Navy vet who cajoled to get Pearl Harbor bodies ID’D dies
HONOLULU — A Pearl Harbor survivor who pushed to identify buried unknown remains from the 1941 attack died Monday at age 97.
Ray Emory lived through the early-morning Japanese aerial bombing but never forgot those who didn’t. He spent the past few decades doggedly pushing for those unknown buried remains to be dug up, identified and returned to their families.
Emory died “died peacefully and without pain” in a hospital in Boise, Idaho, according to his family, said Billy Doughty, deputy director of public affairs for Navy Region Hawaii.
He recently moved to Boise to live with his son. He left Hawaii because his wife had died and he didn’t have any family in Hawaii.
Before moving, he visited Pearl Harbor one last time in June.
More than 500 sailors stood side by side on ships and piers to surprise him.
In 2012, the Navy and National Park Service recognized Emory for his work with the military and Department of Veterans Affairs to honor and remember Pearl Harbor’s dead.
First, he managed to get gravestones for unknowns from the USS Arizona marked with name of their battleship.
In 2003, the military agreed to dig up a casket that Emory was convinced, after meticulously studying records, included the remains of multiple USS Oklahoma servicemen. Emory was right, and five sailors were identified.
It helped lay the foundation for the Pentagon’s decision more than a decade later to exhume and attempt to identify all 388 sailors and Marines from the USS Oklahoma who had been buried as unknowns in a national cemetery in Honolulu.
Since those 2015 exhumations, 138 sailors from the USS Oklahoma have been identified. About 77 have been reburied, many in their hometowns, bringing closure to families across the country.