Updated at 8:01 a.m., Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Pearl Harbor casualty's remains identified as sailor's
Associated Press
WORTHINGTON, Ind.— The remains of a U.S. serviceman killed during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 65 years ago have been identified as those of a sailor from Indiana, the Navy said yesterday.Petty Officer 3rd Class Alfred E. Livingston was a crewman aboard the USS Oklahoma when it and 20 other ships of the U.S. Pacific fleet were attacked by Japanese planes and submarines on Dec. 7, 1941.
After the attack, military officials could not identify the sailor's body, and he was buried in Hawaii.
Last February, a World War II historian told the military the remains might be Livingston's, since only two men with that last name were killed at Pearl Harbor and the Indiana man was still unaccounted for.
The remains were disinterred and a match made by comparing dental records and skeletal structures, said Chief Petty Officer Hugh Laughlin of the Navy Office of Community Outreach in Indianapolis.
Genetic testing was impossible because the remaining DNA had been degraded, Laughlin said.
Livingston's remains will be returned to his family in Worthington, about 30 miles southeast of Terre Haute.
Nephew Ken Livingston, 57, of Indianapolis, said the discovery ends years of uncertainty for the family, which is planning a funeral with military honors Saturday.
