Sailor says goodbye before leaving Hawaii
PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii — Nearly eight decades ago, Ray Emory, then a young sailor, watched in disbelief as Japanese torpedoes tore into American ships in Pearl Harbor.
Emory survived the devastating attack but didn’t forget his fellow sailors and Marines who died and were buried there without anyone knowing their names.
His relentless efforts in the years that followed led to nearly 150 of those servicemen finally being identified so their families could find closure.
Now frail with white-hair, the 97-year-old Emory arrived Tuesday in a golf cart at the pier where his ship, the USS Honolulu, was moored on Dec. 7, 1941. He came to say what could be his final goodbye to the storied naval base.
More than 500 sailors were there to greet him. They lined the rails and formed an honor cordon, cheering “Hip, Hip, Hooray!” Emory saluted them.
“I’m glad I came and I’ll never forget it,” Emory told reporters after a ceremony in his honor.
Emory wanted to visit the pier before leaving Hawaii for Boise, Idaho. His wife recently died, and he plans to live with his son there and go fishing.
During the attack on Pearl Harbor, Emory managed to fire a few rounds at the airplanes that dropped the torpedoes. He still has an empty bullet casing that fell to his ship deck.
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.
Bureaucrats didn’t welcome his efforts, at least not initially. Emory says they politely told him to “’go you-know-where.”’ It didn’t deter him.
First, thanks to legislation sponsored by the late U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink of Hawaii, he managed to get gravestones for the unknowns from the USS Arizona marked with the name of their battleship.
In 2003, the military agreed to dig up a casket that Emory was convinced, after 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 a decade later to exhume and attempt to identify all 388 sailors and Marines from the Oklahoma who had been buried as unknowns in Honolulu. Since 2015, 138 sailors form the Oklahoma have been identified.