Remains of a Jewish serviceman killed in Pearl Harbor bombing identified
Defense Agency says it has accounted for Charles M. Stern Jr., thanks to enhanced DNA testing of remains exhumed in 2015
JTA — The remains of a Jewish serviceman killed in the bombing of Pearl Harbor have been identified.
Charles M. Stern Jr. of Albany, New York, was an ensign who enlisted in the US Navy on August 1, 1940. He was 26 when he died on the USS Oklahoma on December 7, 1941, one of 429 crewmen who were killed in the Japanese attack on the ship.
Stern was buried with the remains of other unidentified soldiers from the attack in a mass grave in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii.
In 2015, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency exhumed the unidentified remains from the Oklahoma and used more sophisticated DNA testing to identify the remains of the dead. The agency announced Tuesday that Stern’s remains were accounted for.
His nephew and namesake, Charles M. Stern III, told the New York television station News10 that Stern will be buried in a plot next to his parents, as the family originally intended.
In 1943, Albany Veterans’ Post 105 and the Jewish Welfare board dedicated a service flag at the Albany JCC representing 550 Jewish men killed in service. The book “The Jewish Veteran” noted that one of the gold stars on the flag represented Stern, the first man from Albany to be killed in action.
