The remains of 17-year-old soldier who lost his life during the attack on Pearl Harbor are finally coming home to be buried after nearly 85 years, the US Navy announced.
Royle Luker will be buried with full military honors in his hometown of Plainview, Arkansas on May 30 after his remains were finally identified by authorities who exhumed them from an eight-decades old grave marked “unknown,” according to the military.
Luker was a fireman on the USS West Virginia, and was among the 106 crewmen who died when it was attacked by Japan on Dec. 7, 1941.
The soldier was awarded numerous medals and honors posthumously for his actions during the attack, including the Purple Heart, Combat Action Ribbon, World War II Victory Medal, American Campaign Medal, Navy Presidential Unit Citation, Navy Good Conduct Medal, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, Navy Expeditionary Medal, and was also recognized as a World War II Gold Star Veteran.
Officials at the time were not able to identify Luker’s remains. His name was added to the Tablets of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial in Hawaii until recently.
In 2017, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency began exhuming 35 caskets containing remains associated with West Virginia, which Luker was among, and used forensic science to identify the dead, according to military news site Stars and Stripes.
Advances in DNA science allowed the agency to work with family members to confirm the sailor’s identity, officials said.
He was survived by two nephews, Donald Bradford Henderson and John Luker, and a niece, Becky Downen Lensing, according to his obituary.
Luker’s services will begin at 2 p.m. at New Bethel Cemetery in Plainview, Arkansas, where he will be laid to rest alongside his parents — his father George F. Luker, a World War I veteran, and his mother, Nettie Estelle Luker.
