KILLED  AT  PEARL  HARBOR

IDENTIFIED  AFTER  77-YEARS

Historical records report that Richard Joseph Thomson was born on October 6, 1922 in Texas.  He entered the Navy from Texas in November 1940 and was a Seaman Second Class serving aboard the battleship USS Oklahoma on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor.  When the attack occurred, Oklahoma was struck by as many as seven torpedoes in the early phase of the battle, quickly flooded and within less than twelve minutes the ship rolled over until halted by her masts touching bottom capsized.  A reported 429 Oklahoma crew members died during the attack, including S2 Thomson. 

In 1943, Oklahoma was finally refloated but she was so damaged that repair and return to duty was impractical.  Immediately after the attack and during the salvage operation numerous bodies were recovered but most were too damaged to be identified, and only about 35 of them were identified in the years following the attack.  The remains of 388 unidentified sailors and Marines were first interred as “unknowns” in the Nu’uanu and Halawa cemeteries, but all were disinterred in 1947 in an unsuccessful attempt to identify more.  In 1950, the unidentified remains from the Oklahoma were reburied in 61 caskets in 45 graves at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii.

In 2015, the Department of Defense announced a plan for disinterment of unknowns with the goal of returning identified remains to their families.  On March 20, 2019, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced that the remains of the S2 Thomson had finally been identified.  His name is engraved on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, along with others who are missing from world War II.  A rosette has been placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for and his remains have reportedly been reburied at Fairview Cemetery in League City, Texas.

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)