Herbert Jacobson killed during WWII attack on Pearl Harbor buried

80 years after the World War Two attack, the family of a US sailor slain at Pearl Harbor was finally permitted to attend his funeral.

After contemporary forensic analysis made it possible to identify Herbert Jacobson's remains, they were interred in Arlington National Cemetery.

According to a nephew who spoke to news agency AP, the family feels "closure" now that they know the sailor's fate.

He was one among the thousands of people killed or hurt by the Japanese attack.

The US entered the war on December 7, 1941, after a sudden Japanese attack on a naval facility in Hawaii.

400 sailors, including 21-year-old "Bert" Jacobson, perished while serving on the USS Oklahoma, one of four battleships sunk by Japanese torpedoes.

It was two years before their remains were retrieved, although many could not be identified.

Numerous attempts were made to identify each victim, but it wasn't until 2019 and the use of the most recent DNA analysis that Jacobson's remains were recognized.

On Tuesday, he was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, which is located over the Potomac from Washington, DC. The pandemic had caused a delay in the ceremony, which was attended by his descendants but who had never met him.

It gives us closure to finally know what happened to Bert, where he is, and that he is finally laid to rest after being listed as an unknown for so long, according to nephew Brad McDonald, who spoke to the Associated Press. "This has kind of been an unsolved mystery," he added.

Following unsuccessful attempts to identify the Pearl Harbor victims, including using dental records, a fresh campaign to employ more cutting-edge identification methods, including DNA, was begun in 2003, followed by another in 2015.

The Jacobson family, who told AP that Bert's mother cries every 7 December, at least in part because she never knows where he is, said those attempts had given them fresh hope.

More than 2,400 Americans had died within two hours of the 1941 attack, and the majority of the US fleet stationed at the Pacific base had been damaged or destroyed.

The United States entered World War Two the following day when US President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared war on Japan.

An operational naval base, museum, and national memorial honor the victims of the attack at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.