Royle Luker, who died at age 17 while serving as a fireman 3rd class aboard the USS West Virginia during the 1941 Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, poses in an undated photo. (U.S. Navy)
A U.S. Navy sailor who died at age 17 aboard the battleship USS West Virginia during the 1941 Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor will be buried May 30 in his Arkansas hometown.
Fireman 3rd Class Royle Luker will be buried with full military honors at New Bethel Cemetery in Plainview, where he was raised before enlisting in June 1941, according to a Navy statement Wednesday.
He was the son of George Luker, a World War I veteran, and Nettie Estelle David Luker. He is survived by two nephews and a niece, according to his obituary on the website of Cornwell Funeral Home, in Dardanelle, Ark.
The presiding Navy flag officer at the ceremony will be Rear Adm. Michael Van Poots, deputy commander of Submarine Forces.
Luker was among the 105 West Virginia crew members who died on Dec. 7, 1941.
His remains were unidentifiable with forensic methods available in that era, and he was buried in the grave marked “unknown.”
The West Virginia was hit by at least seven torpedoes as the ship was moored at Ford Island on Battleship Row. It sank in the shallow water and came to rest on the harbor floor.
Salvage work began soon after the attack. Torpedo holes were patched well enough to pump the ship dry, and it was refloated on May 17, 1942.
“Following the attack, rescuers were alerted that sailors were alive within the hull by tapping sounds coming from within the ship,” the Navy statement said.
“The trapped sailors were sitting on tons of live sunken ammunition and no technology existed back then to rescue them,” it said. “All rescue personnel could do was stand by helplessly.”
Some survived for days in air pockets, living on emergency rations and freshwater.
Three men survived in an airtight storeroom until Dec. 23, leaving behind a calendar with 16 days crossed out in red pencil, according to the Navy.
Salvagers discovered the remains of about 70 men below decks, the Navy said.
Dozens of recovered remains were interred at the Halawa Naval Cemetery on Oahu. They were disinterred in 1947 by personnel with the American Graves Registration Service, who identified all but 34 remains.
Those remains were designated “non-recoverable” and buried as unknowns in what is now the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.
In 2017, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, which uses forensic methods to identify the nation’s war dead, exhumed 35 caskets containing remains associated with the West Virginia.
Luker was among those.
