KALAMAZOO, Mich. — A Kalamazoo man was one of the 429 men killed on the USS Oklahoma when the ship was destroyed during the Pearl Harbor attacks on Dec. 7, 1941.
Seaman Joe Nightingale was 19 at the time.
Three hundred eighty-eight men were unaccounted for as of 2015, according to the U.S. Navy. Today, 355 of them have been identified and reunited with families.
Nightingale's family is glad that Joe is home so he can finally be laid to rest 80 years later.
"My brother Charles is 89, and I'm 80," says Carol Foster. "And had no idea that we would live long enough to see this happen. And this is such a memorial to him. And I praise God that they love this to happen if the Navy did all this for us."
The unidentified remains of the 51 sailors are being shipped back to Hawai'i for reinterment at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
