WELLS-FLOYD

HOME  AFTER  78-YEARS

Floyd Arthur Wells was born on April 18, 1917 in Cavalier, North Dakota.  In 1938 he enlisted in the Navy at Minneapolis, Minnesota.  On December 7, 1941 he was a Radioman Second Class assigned to the battleship USS Arizona which was moored at Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, when the ship was attacked by Japanese aircraft.  A bomb that struck the ship resulted in the cataclysmic explosion of a magazine, and ignited a fire that burned for two days. 

Unfortunately, the attack resulted in the deaths of 1,177 crewmen, including RM2 Wells.  In the chaotic conditions following the attack numerous deceased victims could not be identified and were thus buried in mass graves at Nu’uanu Naval Cemetery in addition to the bodies which remained inaccessible and  entombed in the ship.  Eventually the “unknowns” were reburied at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.  In 2015, the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System disinterred a casket of “unknowns” to use a variety of techniques not available in 1941 to identify the personnel, and relatives of RM2 Wells were contacted to furnish DNA samples.  In the summer of 2019, the family was again contacted with the announcement that RM2 Wells had finally been identified.  His family had sat empty for decades not knowing whether his remains were buried with “unknowns” or remained entombed in the Arizona.  Additionally, a space had been set aside with the family plot at the Cavalier Cemetery in Cavalier, North Dakota, with the anticipation he would someday come home to join the rest of his family. 

On October 1, 2019 after a delay of nearly 78-years, RM2 Floyd Arthur Wells returned to North Dakota, and with relatives from around the country who had never met him in attendance, he was reburied with military honors in the Veterans National Cemetery in Mandan, North Dakota, where relatives said, “He is a North Dakota boy and there he’s going to get the recognition he deserves.”

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