Pearl Harbor sailor identified among 'unknown'

By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer

For just the second time, military forensic experts have identified a casualty who was buried for decades as an "unknown" after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Payton L. Vanderpool Jr. was a fireman 2nd class aboard the USS Pennsylvania.

Vanderpool's sisters were briefed yesterday by Navy officials. They could scarcely believe what they heard.

"It is unreal," said Thelma Blanton, who was a high school student when she last saw her brother, "PL."

"I just can't imagine this happening in my lifetime," said Blanton, a 76-year-old resident of Kansas City, Kan. "I am so thankful that us sisters were still here when this happened, so we can be a part of it. I am still in awe of it all. It is just a miracle to me."

Blanton joined other family members for the briefing at the home of her sister, Flora Mae Young, who lives just south of Leavenworth, Kan.

The 81-year-old Young often heard people talk about closure. Now she understands what they mean.

"I hadn't felt that until today," she said. "I'd say that is how we all feel."

The mystery surrounding their brother's fate was something the family had learned to accept long ago, Young said.

"We just thought he would be unknown," Young said. "He is on the Court of the Missing at Punchbowl. That was it."

Emory is the historian whose research — and relentless requests — led military officials in November 2001 to identify apprentice seaman Thomas Hembree, the first Pearl Harbor "unknown" ever identified.

In March 2002, the former mechanical engineer found himself looking at a set of files a friend had sent nearly a year earlier. They're called "X files" because each one contains everything but the name of a Pearl Harbor casualty.

One of the X files contained dental records, so Emory thought he would compare it with the dozens of personnel files he had collected through the years.

Vanderpool's file, which had been lying around his home for four years, was a perfect match.

The military thought so, too.

The disinterred remains were examined at the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command at Hickam Air Force Base.

Navy Capt. John Lewis Jr., a forensic odontologist who reviewed some of the case, said a photograph of Vanderpool provided a key bit of information. The smiling young sailor was missing a tooth, his upper right lateral incisor. The remains were missing the same tooth.

"It was a remarkable resemblance between the photograph and the dental remains," Lewis said. "This was one of those cases I would say is relatively rare. It really jumped out at you."

The Pennsylvania was in drydock during the attack. The 22-year-old Vanderpool was on the pier sitting on a wood pile with his morning coffee when the bombs began to fall. His personnel file said he was conscious when an ambulance took him away.

That was the last anyone ever saw of him.

Back in his hometown of Lawson, Mo., his parents took the news hard. The first two telegrams that came in January 1942 told the family he was missing, then "accounted for." The last one said he was "presumed dead."

The local chapter of the American Legion held a memorial for Vanderpool in the courtyard of the county courthouse. Blanton and her parents were there.

"I remember I cried," she said.

Now she and her sisters have another service to attend. The family plans to bury Vanderpool at the family plot in Braymer, Mo., beside his parents.

There will be full military honors, courtesy of the Navy.

That will bring them full circle. The burial will be at 1 p.m. Dec. 7 at Evergreen Cemetery.

"That's the day he passed away, 62 years ago," Young said. "To the day. Almost to the moment."

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8012.