SAN ANTONIO — On Monday, 80 years after he was killed aboard the USS Oklahoma when Japanese forces bombed Pearl Harbor, a World War II hero was remembered in San Antonio.
Frank Nicoles, a fireman with the U.S. Navy, was just 24 when he died in the 1941 attack. For decades his remains were unidentified, having been buried as an Unknown at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu in the '40s, one of 394 such sailors and Marines who died on the Oklahoma.
It wasn't until modern technology helped identify him that his descendants were provided with closure. Now he's been laid to rest at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. More than 2,400 Americans were killed in the attack on December 6, 1941.
Christopher Thompson was there when Nicoles's remains arrived in the Alamo City; he's one of the service members only living relatives who had been born when Nicoles died.
"It's an emotional moment," he said Monday. "The family is very gratified at the work that the military has gone to to try to identify and bring home casualties from the war."
Nicoles's remains were identified in 2016 using DNA samples from family, as part of the USS Oklahoma Project, which launched the year prior.
DNA samples have been collected from dozens of relatives in the seven years since, as the effort to identify other Unknowns continues. Officials with the Department of Defense said in September that, at that point, fewer than 50 of the initial 394 remained unidentified.