Remains of North Platte sailor identified
by Frank Graham (North Platte Bulletin)Ê
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The remains of a North Platte man killed during the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor may finally be identified Ð 66 years after he was killed.
Paul Holley joined the Navy after his graduation from North Platte High School in 1936. His brother Errette Holley, who graduated a year behind him in 1937, also joined the Navy. Both served on the USS California in the Pacific.
The Holley brothers were on the California the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, when it was struck by two torpedoes.
Errette made it off alive. Paul didn't.
Paul was one of 647 dead servicemen unidentified after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor that day. Like the others, he was buried in an unmarked grave in Hawaii.
Now, through the efforts of a retired Pearl Harbor survivor and the U.S. government, Paul's remains may finally be identified.
Thanks to the work of Ray Emory, an 87-year-old member of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, and Hawaii-based Joint Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Command and the American Grave Registration Service Group.
Their goal is the identification and proper burial of unknown American servicemen who died overseas. They have worked tirelessly to identify the remains of those sailors and soldiers unaccounted for.
Emory, a retired mechanical engineer, has long championed the cause of the unknown soldiers, working out of a document-filled office in his Kahala home.
"The government hasn't always been helpful," Emory said. "They were reluctant to open up WW II records at first."
Through the help of a congressman, the government is cooperating a lot better now, according to Emory.
Emory thinks he can identify at least 100 more unknown sailors from Pearl Harbor. He thinks he has found Paul Holley.
Emory has retrieved records and dental X-rays and believes he has a match.
"We're 99.9 percent certain it's Holley," Emory said.
Emory said Holley was buried in a grave marked "Halawa X 83," in Hawaii.
The attack
Paul Holley never really had a chance to live.
At dawn on Dec. 7, 1941, the skinny 23-year-old NPHS graduate was on duty on the U.S.S. California as a gunner.
At 7:50 a.m., the first Japanese bombers appeared in the sky. The California, a flagship of the battle force, was hit fore and aft by two Japanese torpedoes in the early minutes of the raid. The ship was later hit by a bomb and near-missed by another, which caused additional flooding. A large mass of burning oil drifting down "Battleship Row" threatened to set the wounded ship afire. She was ordered abandoned.
Paul's little brother Errette, then only 22 years old, was also on the ship. He served as an electrician.
"Errette said he was ordered to abandon the sinking ship during the attack," said Errette's wife Beverly Holley, prior to her death. "He did as he was told but boarded it later that day to fight the fires."
Marilyn-Lee Hoffman, Errette's and Beverly's daughter, said she only heard her dad talk about the attack once.
"He cried all the way through it," Hoffman said. "It was so hard for him to remember."
Hoffman said her dad believed he might have stepped over his own brother's body but never knew it because of the smoke, the oil and the fires.
Hoffman said Errette jumped overboard into the oily burning sea after being ordered to abandon ship and was picked up by a PT boat.
"They took the crewman back to the ship to fight the fires," Hoffman said.
When the crew returned, they extinguished the fires and conterflooded the vessel to correct a list of 16 degrees.
Errette desperately looked for his big brother.
"They passed him around from location to location," Beverly said. "Finally, someone told him Paul was dead."
Hoffman said her dad didn't find out about Paul's death until the next day.
Paul died passing ammunition during the battle, likely when one of the torpedoes struck the California.
Despite the crew's effort to keep the ship afloat, the California settled on the bottom of the bay Dec. 10. She was later refloated in March 1942, repaired and put back into service.
Bodies were removed from the ship's hull and from the water all around her. Nearly a hundred of her officers and men were killed in action during the attack. Some were never identified.
Paul Holley was one of unidentified bodies.
It was 66 years ago when John and Coerine Holley of North Platte received a telegram that their oldest son Holley had been killed during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
The nation didn't have the manpower or resources to identify all the bodies right away. There was a war to be fought.
Most of the unidentified were buried at the Nuuanu Cemetery, others at the Halawa Cemetery on the island of Oahu. Most were later moved to Oahu's National Cemetery of the Pacific Ð a hallowed resting place often called "The Punchbowl."
There were 2,079 unidentified World War II dead from the Pacific. They came from such battle sites as Guadalcanal, China, Burma, Saipan, Guam, Okinawa and Iwo Jima and from prisoner of war camps in Japan. There were 178 Wake Island dead interred in a mass burial on July 10, 1953. Also interred in the cemetery are the unidentified remains of 848 U.S. servicemen who died fighting in Korea.
There were 647 unidentified from Pearl Harbor in graves marked "unknown."
Those men haven't been forgotten.
The family
John Holley took the death of his son hard. He fell ill and never recovered. John died in July 1943, at the age of 53.
Errette, who survived the attack, was still in the Navy in the southwest Pacific.
The family was granted a memorial plaque for Paul in the Fort McPherson National Cemetery on April 13, 1960 Ð 19 years after his death.
Paul's mother died in 1990 and is buried in North Platte.
After leaving the Navy, Errette married Beverly and moved to New Columbia, Pa., where he worked as a rural mail carrier. He died there in 2001. Beverly died there in Nov., 2007.
Errette and Beverly had one daughter, Hoffman, who is 60 years old and can provide the only living link to Paul.
Hoffman said she would be happy to provide DNA if that would help.
Emory said Paul Holley's relatives would have several options now that the body has been identified. He said Holley's remains could be re-buried in Hawaii or shipped home.
Beverly said, before her death, that she wasn't sure they would bring Holley back to the mainland.
"Errette talked to some government officials about it once," Beverly said. "He told them to leave him where he was, that his brother was peaceful."
Beverly said Errette loved to visit North Platte and attended his 50th high school reunion in 1988.
"He didn't talk too much about his and Paul's war experiences," Beverly said. "He mostly remembered things they did that made him laugh."
Emory's work
Emory helped identify the remains of 18-year-old Seaman 2nd Class Warren P. Hickok and returned him to Kalamazoo, Mich., just as he did for Payton L. Vanderpool Jr., a 22-year-old fireman second class, and of Thomas Hembree, a 17-year-old apprentice seaman.
The sailors who were buried as unknowns would have remained so if not for Emory's obsession with collecting official World War II documents and doing detective work to link the bodies with their records.
Hickok was assigned to the destroyer USS Sicard, which was in dry dock when the attack occurred. He is thought to have died instantly when a bomb was dropped onto the battleship.
Vanderpool was stationed aboard the USS Pennsylvania, which was in dry dock during the attack. He was one of 24 men killed aboard the ship. The men didn't wear dog tags, so no one could identify them.
Vanderpool was taken back to Missouri and buried just feet from his parents.
Hembree, from Kennewick, Wash., who served on the USS Curtiss when he died during the attack, was buried with full military honors in 2002.
Emory said he does it to honor the men he served with. He was aboard the USS Honolulu that Sunday morning and said it was difficult to grasp that history and fate had collided in Pearl Harbor.
The attack lasted two hours and hit other military bases and sections of the island. Twenty-one ships were heavily damaged and 323 aircraft were damaged or destroyed.
In all, 2,388 people were killed and 1,178 were wounded.
Emory hasn't forgotten the men or their families.
"These people were told the bodies were never recovered," Emory said. "The sad part is they weren't missing, just unidentified."
Emory now works with other survivors and the government to find forensic evidence to identify the unknown soldiers.
"Paul had a porcelain crown on an upper right tooth," Emory said. "His dental records will go a long way toward identifying him."
"It's very satisfying to ship a sailor home," he said.
What will happen next is not in doubt Ð Paul Holley will be buried with full military honors.
"But where that happens will be up to the family," Emory said. "We can bring him home to North Platte or put him to rest in the Punchbowl."
Either way, Paul Holley won't be lost any longer.
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The North Platte Bulletin
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