LOGAN A Navy sailor killed aboard the USS Oklahoma will finally be laid to rest this Saturday.
Navy Controlman 2nd Class Donald Robert McCloud hailed from Monaville and was only 21-years-old back on December seventh, 1941. It has taken 81 years since that day of infamy for McCloud to return home.
McCloud was assigned to the Oklahoma moored at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese sneak attack occurred.
McCloud was among the 429 dead aboard the USS Oklahoma during recovery efforts following the attack. Only 35 of the dead were identifiable at the time.
The remains were then interred at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.
Another attempt to identify all the remains got underway in 2015. Updated technology in identification really helped to the point that only 32 from the “Okie” remain to be identified.
Petty Officer Second Class McCloud was accounted for on September 23, 2016, The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced last December. A rosette is place next to names of those accounted for on the Courts of the Missing memorial at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
Thursday, May eighteenth, McCloud will be transported to Honaker Funeral Home from the John Glenn International airport in Columbus, Ohio.
Logan County Sheriff PD Clemens will accompany Honaker Funeral Home to Columbus to transport back to Logan. Sheriff Clemens says it’s the least he can do and it’s not enough.
“I feel very honored,” the sheriff told WVOW News, “I’ve always been about our veterans. I don’t think they get treated right enough anyway. It’s an honor to escort this individual and bring him back to lay beside his family. He was decorated. He deserves more than what we’re giving him.”
Services will be conducted at eleven o’clock this Saturday morning May twentieth at Honaker Funeral Home in downtown Logan with retired Brigidier General Bruce Reed officiating.
Internment will follow at the McCloud Family Cemetery at East Fork of Twelve Pole Creek in Dingess.
As for the USS Oklahoma, she was finally refloated in 1943 with the aid of twenty 10,000 gallon per-minute pumps and towed into dry dock. The boat was decommissioned the following year and sold for $46,000 to Oakland, California based Moore Drydock Co. Two tugboats began towing the Oklahoma to California. The former battleship began to sink straight down causing the water to swamp the sterns of the tugboats. The crews released it and let it sink to save themselves.
USS Oklahoma capsized at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The battleship took on torpedoes from above and below water. A total of 429 were killed aboard the USS Oklahoma.
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