By The Chronicle staff
Born in Aberdeen on July 6, 1919, Radioman Third Class Frank Samuel Hoag Jr. died on Dec. 7, 1941, when the ship he was on, the U.S.S. Oklahoma, capsized during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Hoag Jr.’s remains were originally unidentified, but now that he has been accounted for, he will be buried at 12:30 p.m. on Aug. 8 at the Tahoma National Cemetery in Kent, according to a U.S. Navy news release.
His surviving family resides in Cle Elum, according to the release.
As a radioman, he was responsible for sending and receiving coded messages, using typewriters and making adjustments and repairs to the ship’s radio receivers and transmitters.
Of the nearly 1,400 sailors on board the Oklahoma, 429 were killed, including Hoag Jr.
While World War II continued, U.S. Navy personnel recovered remains of deceased crew members from Pearl Harbor until June 1944, interring those they recovered at the Halawa and Nu’uanu cemeteries in Hawaii.
In 1947, the American Graves Registration Service (AGRS) disinterred the remains from the Hawaiian cemeteries and transferred them to the Central Identification Laboratory at the Schofield barracks, but laboratory staff were only able to identify 35 of the 429 U.S.S. Oklahoma sailors’ remains at the time.
AGRS reburied the unidentified remains at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu. In October 1949, a military board classified the unidentified remains as non-recoverable.
Then, in 2015, the defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency personnel exhumed the remains of the unidentified sailors for further analysis. Using DNA analysis, they were able to positively identify Hoag Jr.
Since the 2015 disinterment occurred
For more information on the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, visit https://www.dpaa.mil/.
To learn more about the U.S.S. Oklahoma and its crew, visit https://tinyurl.com/rz6erh5r.
