Teen Sailor Killed at Pearl Harbor Identified, Will be Buried With Honors
Royle Luker will be laid to rest next to his parents on May 30 at New Bethel Cemetery.
Royle Luker’s remains have been identified 85 years after he lost his life during the attack on Pearl Harbor aboard the USS West Virginia.
Luker will finally head home to Plainview, Arkansas. From Stars & Stripes:
Fireman 3rd Class Royle Luker will be buried with full military honors at New Bethel Cemetery in Plainview, where he was raised before enlisting in June 1941, according to a Navy news release Wednesday.
He was the son of George Luker, a World War I veteran, and Nettie Estelle David Luker. He is survived by two nephews and a niece, according to his obituary on the Cornwell Funeral Home of Darndanelle, Ark., website.
The presiding Navy flag officer at the ceremony will be Rear Adm. Michael Van Poots, deputy commander of Submarine Forces.
Luker was among the 105 West Virginia crew members who died on Dec. 7, 1941.
Luker received the following medals and honors: Purple Heart, Combat Action Ribbon, World War II Victory Medal, American Campaign Medal, Navy Presidential Unit Citation, Navy Good Conduct Medal, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, Navy Expeditionary Medal, and World War II Gold Star Veteran.
The Japanese hit the USS West Virginia with seven torpedoes. It sank in the shallow water before hitting the harbor floor:
“Following the attack, rescuers were alerted that sailors were alive within the hull by tapping sounds coming from within the ship,” the Navy release said.
“The trapped sailors were sitting on tons of live sunken ammunition and no technology existed back then to rescue them,” it said. “All rescue personnel could do was stand by helplessly.”
Some survived for days in air pockets, living on emergency rations and freshwater.
Three men survived in an airtight storeroom until Dec. 23, leaving behind a calendar with 16 days crossed out in red pencil, the Navy release states.
But salvagers found remains of 70 men.
The military interred the remains at the Halawa Naval Cemetery on Oahu.
The American Graves Registration disinterred the remains in 1947. Scientists identified all of the men except for 34.
Those not identified were buried as unknowns at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency exhumed the bodies in 2017. The organization used advanced DNA science and family members to identify the fallen heroes.
Luker will be laid to rest next to his parents on May 30 at New Bethel Cemetery.
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Comments
It’s one thing to serve your country, amplified by the fact that he was serving before the war started.
It’s another thing to make the ultimate sacrifice and the enduring pain that brings to your family, especially that his parents never got him back while they were alive.
But it’s an altogether different thing to perish entombed in a sunken ship, being alive but knowing you’re dead, surviving for days with no hope of rescue.
I’m glad this young man is finally home and at rest.
Same with the Oklahoma. Those were very dark days…. as the carriers sailed back into Pearl with the Arizona still burning. We really haven’t won a armed war since then….
Well, Grenada.
We aren’t that country anymore, and anyone who thinks different is fooling themselves. Our unity is gone, along with much else.
I’m glad I’m old.
💯^^
I imagine some crass politician would want the money spent on “the living” ….. as in “potential voters”. The US leaves no warrior behind…. they all have names, a past and a future lost serving this country. Good to see that he is going home.
I visited Yorktown last February. I went for the Revolutionary War history. But an unknown Civil War nugget was in the middle of the redoubts. Which makes sense when you think about it – it was Virginia, so of course there were a few battles fought there in the 1860s.
Anyway, there was a cemetery of Union dead. The text of the Gettysburg Address was in bronze on the building, and the sacred feeling within that walled cemetery was beyond words. And so many of the grave markers read something as follows “15 unknown dead from the Massachusetts Company.”
I think Lincoln’s words are the only ones that fit that sacred place of our unknown soldiers, the ones who gave more than their lives, but also their identities.
I can belt we couldn’t have figured a way out for them
I never knew
Believe.. not belt
Phone
Their just had to be some freaking way
There was no way to dock with them underwater. The technology just didn’t exist. Since they were in a sealed compartment, if they breached it, the compartment would flood.
Welcome home brother.
RIP
Can’t stop looking at that sweet sweet boys face
And there were so many like him that never came home. Sad days.
The only technology available was acetylene torches. If the compartment wasn’t accessible through the hull there was no chance at rescue.