Sunrise over the Hawaiian Islands was just before 7 a.m. on the last morning of 17-year-old Tommy Hembree’s life.

On the last morning of their lives, too:

For 2,007 officers and other enlisted men of the United States Navy.

For 218 American soldiers.

For 109 United States Marines.

For 68 civilians on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu.

For 129 aviators, crewmen and submariners of the Japanese Imperial Navy.

It was December 7, 1941 – 80 years ago – a brilliantly beautiful Sunday morning, with church services undergoing preparation or already underway in early offerings aboard ship, around the sprawling U.S. naval installation known as Pearl Harbor, or across Hawaii’s main island of welcome, Oahu.

Tommy Hembree, a Kennewick native and teen-ager who was still five months and 10 days away from his 18th birthday on this Sunday morning, had needed the signature of his mother, Elizabeth Hembree, to enlist in the U.S. Navy. He became the first Benton County resident to be killed in World War II when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

Tommy’s Journey

Tommy’s journey that would put him on a path to the destiny of one of America’s most horrific historical events on “a date which will live in infamy,” began in Kennewick with its rural surroundings of the 1920s and 1930s when residents were numbered in the hundreds. Kennewick as an incorporated community was barely 20 years old when he was born.

The census listed only about 1,900 residents in Kennewick when Tommy chose in 1941 to enlist rather than finish school, following two older brothers, Walter and George, into military service.

When he was born, his parents listed on his birth certificate Vista, Washington as his place of birth, and listed Vista as their community of residence. For Tommy, it is forever so in the archives of his military records. He listed Vista as his birthplace on enlistment papers and it followed him into military service and continues today in the archives of his service record.

When Tommy’s mother gave birth on May 17, 1924 to the youngest of her five surviving children, three boys and two girls, in a rural Kennewick neighborhood known as Vista, (a third daughter, Eva Hembree, an infant, lived just 12 days and died on September 16, 1922) Kennewick was a town without a hospital. In the minds of some families, it was perhaps the neighborhood of birth that became the place of birth.

Growing up in the Great Depression that produced a hardscrabble life for many, Tommy was close to his family, immediate and extended. His mother secured that closeness with her dedication to her children, raising them alone and putting their welfare first as she eeked out a living working long hours cleaning office buildings.

In a 2001 interview, a cousin, Pat Martell, then 73, said Tommy was like another member of her immediate family, spending as much time as he did at his aunt and uncle’s strawberry farm on 10th Avenue east of today’s Washington Street. If he had something, like an ice cream cone and she didn’t, Tommy always shared, Pat said.

“He was like my brother; we just grew up together,” Pat said at the time.

She was a teenager like Tommy – barely 13 – when she learned of his death at Pearl Harbor.

“I cried a lot,” she said.

Kennewick’s first park, Keewaydin, and now its oldest, was established just two years before Tommy was born, and in his years growing up, it was three stone throws or so away from his mother’s home on West Third Avenue just around the corner from Washington Street. A perfect place for brothers and sisters to escape into melodramas of fun.

Tommy enlisted at the Navy’s substation recruiting depot in Yakima on July 17, 1941 and arrived for active duty as an apprentice seaman at the United States Navy Training Station in San Diego on August 4, 1941 to undergo basic training. To Tommy, it was to be the beginning of a planned Navy career he told recruiters.

He sent $5 a month of his pay to Behrman’s Jewelers, a downtown Kennewick mainstay for decades at 107 W. Kennewick Avenue. Before leaving for the service, Tommy had become engaged to a neighbor girl, Helen Waddingham.He also took out a $5,000 insurance policy naming his mother as beneficiary and had a further $3.20 taken out each month from his $21-a-month recruit’s pay.

To the Navy he was not just Seaman First Class Thomas Hembree. On enlisting he also became Navy serial number 386-03-02.

“Received instruction in the nomenclature, assembly, disassembly, safety precautions and proper method of firing Lewis and Browning machine gun, .30-caliber, M2, aircraft fixed and flexible types,” noted his basic completion record.

He also underwent instruction on proper use of a gas mask, including wearing it under actual conditions in a gas chamber. He further proved his prowess as a swimmer to the Navy during training.

“Qualified as marksman on the USMC (United States Marine Corps) rifle range, LaJolla, Calif.,” Tommy’s record also detailed.

He completed training on October 4, 1941 and orders came down for him to report from his San Diego training station to the USS Curtiss, a seaplane tender that was launched as a Navy vessel on April 20, 1940. It was the first seaplane tender specially built for that purpose by the Navy. Cargo ships had been converted for that purpose up until then.

The Curtiss, and ships built like it, “were designed to provide command facilities for forward operating long-range patrol seaplane squadrons.”

That, it turned out, made the Curtiss a top priority target during the attack on Pearl Harbor, captured documents revealed when found in Japanese planes shot down during the assault on America’s Hawaiian naval base.

At the time of the attack, The Curtiss was armed with four 38-caliber dual-purpose guns, three quad 40-millimeter anti-aircraft guns, and two twin 400-mm anti-aircraft weapons. Later in the war, other armament was added.

The Japanese armada carrying the plane and bomb which took Tommy’s life was already at sea steaming toward Pearl Harbor before Tommy even arrived in the Hawaiian Islands.

The Japanese First Air Fleet included Japan’s six first line aircraft carriers, under the command of Admiral Chuichi Nagumo. It set sail from Hitokappu Bay in the Kuril Islands on November 26, heading for Pearl Harbor 4,000 miles from the Japanese mainland. The carriers were the Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku, and the Zuikaku.

Swollen in their hangars below deck were 420 planes, 353 which would see combat at Pearl Harbor. The squadrons of planes used in the attack included the two-man Aicji D3A1 “Val” dive bomber, the Nakajima BSN torpedo bomber nicknamed “Kate,” and the Mitsubishi Zero-sen fighter.

The naval installation at Pearl was the main target, but the Hickam, Wheeler, and Bellows air fields and the crippling of aircraft in those locations were high on the list of targets. The Army’s Schofield Barracks also was targeted as was the Navy station at Kaneohe.

The Japanese fleet included two battleships, the Hiei and Kirishima; two heavy cruisers; one light cruisers; nine tankers for mid-sea fueling; 9 destroyers; 23 fleet submarines; and five mini-subs to be launched from the fleet submarines.

Tommy had been in Hawaii for just a week when the Japanese armada arrived in darkness on December 7 at a staging area 230 miles north of Oahu.

As the carriers made preparations for launch, most shipmates aboard the Curtiss, except those on watch or early risers, were asleep in their bunks below deck or beginning to stir.

Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, who coordinated and commanded the aerial attack, was the first of 183 pilots to lift off in the first wave, taking his plane from the deck of the Akagi at 6 a.m. into the black skies above the sea. Planes from the Akagi and other carriers immediately followed. When they cleared, the second wave of 170 planes were lifted to the carrier decks from their hangars below, to await orders for their launch that would come in less than an hour.

The Expeditionary Force of advanced submarines had already taken up positions off the coast of Hawaii and launched their 2-man 75-foot-long piggybacked minisubs 7 miles out to sea. They were to make their way into the harbor through its narrow entry and exit channel. The fleet submarines were to attack any American ships which might escape to the open sea during the aerial bombardment.

Not a sliver of light separated the horizon’s darkness from the black surface of the sea for the pilots of the first wave. Illuminated instruments of their cockpits guiding the first wave of pilots to their destination reflected a fraction light off the faces of the young pilots who shared a youth with the young men 200 miles away like Tommy who they would soon engage in combat.

During his week at Pearl, Tommy wrote and sent a letter to his mother – that arrived after his death – telling her that the Hawaiian Islands were beautiful, but that he was homesick.

That Sunday morning when Tommy awakened aboard the Curtiss, his ship was moored to buoys off the entrance to the middle loch of the harbor. Nearer into the loch off the port side of the Curtiss was the USS Medusa, the first-ever Navy purpose-built repair ship. Nearby were other smaller vessels. Inland from the Curtiss port side was land-based Pearl City, where the Pan American Clipper Base lay. To the right of Tommy’s ship on the starboard side was a clear view of Ford Island, broad to the length of a football field.

Tommy and his shipmates could see four ships moored bow to fantail on their side of Ford Island, the USS Tangier, a Class 3-C cargo ship at the time; the dreadnought battleship, the USS Utah, now used for anti-aircraft training purposes; and Omaha-class light cruisers, the USS Raleigh and the USS Detroit.

At 5 p.m. on Saturday, December 6, two-thirds of the 1,195 officers and enlisted men of the 527-foot-long USS Curtiss disembarked on weekend shore leave. Tommy Hembree was not one, and the ship’s senior onboard officer was a 22-year-old ensign, Gene Verge, holding the Navy’s lowest officer rank, equivalent to an Army 2nd. lieutenant.

At sunset that evening on the Curtiss, another shipboard ritual took place with lowering of the flag: “Evening Colors.”

Aboard ship the next morning breakfast was about to get underway at 7 a.m., often a disguised version of a real breakfast mothers spread out of the kitchen table before sending their children off to school.

Dehydrated potatoes and powdered eggs, watered down with powdered milk were not uncommon breakfast fare aboard Navy vessels at the time.

Steaming cups of hot coffee circulating from large, seemingly bottomless urns might help disguise the taste, but breakfast could be a sailor’s lament unless blessed with a shipboard chef with a tasteful touch to turn the dehydrated and powdered selection into a culinary delight. Such chefs tendered a Navy ship’s galley in few and far between numbers.

Below deck in enlisted quarters, Tommy and his bunkmates moved about in different manners of deportment on a casual stand down Sunday, in contrast to much sharper and more timely movements on duty days. Some were stretching sleep-absorbed bodies, rubbing tired eyes, and yawning themselves awake. Others were attending to toiletries like shaving and showering as 8 a.m. approached, with low-key chatter scattering among the shipmates who bumped into and around one another in their post-sleep stupor. Early ones had already breakfasted.

On deck, the morning watch that had begun at 4 a.m. was an hour from giving way at 8 a.m. to the forenoon watch. Just before his 8 a.m. watch was to end, Ensign Verge was relieved early and the young officer, more tired than hungry, chose to skip breakfast for sleep.

U.S. Navy ships, huge or small alike, vessels made for battle or auxiliary support purposes, all had the same morning refrain, opposite of their evening ritual of colors. All berthed at Pearl Harbor were moments away from the 8 a.m. “morning colors” ceremony of hoisting the flag up the ensign on the fantrail. It was a morning ritual immediately following the traditional 7:55 a.m. alert: “First call, first call to colors.”

It never came.

“Battle Stations, This is No Drill”

Verge was unbottoning his shirt as he walked toward his berth when when the first bomb came out of the unsuspecting skies and hit Ford Island at 7:55 a.m.

The first of two waves from the carriers had arrived, many arriving over the Koolau Range in the north of Oahu.

Moments before, Captain Fuchida ordered his radio operator, Petty Officer 1st Class Norinobu Mizuki, to send a coded message to the other 182 pilots to assemble for attack. At 7:53 a.m., observing the tranquility of the harbor he ordered Mizuki to send to the Akagi the coded message: “Tora, Tora, Tora.”

Surprise had been achieved, his coded message confirmed.

When the first Japanese salvos hit on Ford Island, Verge took the three blasts to be bombing practice, an unacceptable Sunday exercise according to Navy regulations.

“Somebody is going to be in trouble,” he thought to himself.

The young officer looked out from the gallery deck of the Curtiss, saw fires burning from two hangars on Ford Island, and then caught sight of planes. Their markings were unmistakable. Pearl Harbor was under attack, the young officer knew. Verge raced to his quarters, phoned the ship’s bridge and ordered general quarters.

The constant wailing of the ship’s alarm paralleled its call to arms: “Battle stations, this is no drill.”

It was a diminished crew that took to battle and duty stations on the Curtiss. One member of a gun crew later reported his 7-man team had only three available.

The blue-eyed, brown-haired teen-age youngster, Tommy Hembree, was about to engage in combat. He hurled his 5-foot, 9 ¾-inch, 140-pound frame toward his duty station as the Curtiss crew shot through narrow passageways and up and down stairways, scrambling to assigned battle stations.

Tommy’s was the radio room, the heart of communication for a ship under attack.

The magazines storing weaponry and ammunition had to be broken open, with officers entrusted with keys for their locks ashore on weekend passes, but within 15 minutes of the first bombs dropped on the unsuspecting ships, the Curtiss was returning fire.

It also was making ready to get underway as boiler room engineers worked feverishly to build up steam by kindling two boilers. A third already was in use powering the electrical system of the Curtiss.

After a first wave of Japanese planes concentrated on their major targets, the battleships and airfields, the marauders turned attention to other targets.

They had been disappointed that the Pacific fleet carriers the Japanese so wanted destroyed were not at Pearl, only by good fortune and some luck. The Saratoga had just undergone months of complete overhaul at the Puget Sound Navy Shipyard in Bremerton and was at San Diego. The Enterprise was returning from Wake Island where it delivered planes and pilots to the Marine squadron there. It was due back at Pearl on December 6, but was still 215 miles north of Oahu because of bad weather. The USS Lexington left Pearl Harbor on December 5 to ferry planes to Midway. It was 500 miles south of Midway when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Both carriers sent out planes unsuccessfully trying to find the Japanese task force.

As the Curtiss was returning fire at the marauders, it was becoming a wanted target of the attackers after their first priority of the battleships. Its capability to launch seaplanes made it an open-sea threat.

A Japanese torpedo bomber coming in low over the water with aim on another ship was hit by intense fire now being returned from any number of American vessels. Streaming with smoke pouring from its engines, the plane remained stable just long enough for the pilot to make a Kamikaze dive into the Curtiss. It smashed into a crane on the stern and set off fires in the ship’s hangar. The plane’s identification numbers later confirmed it had been launched from the Akagi.

The attack on the Curtiss became more intensified. Dive bombers zeroed in on the vessel, dropping what became near misses except for minor damage caused by one striking the superstructure.

At 9:12 a.m. came the hit that most likely took the life of Kennewick’s Tommy Hembree. A 500-pound bomb from one of the aggressors pierced the boat deck, went through three lower decks and finally exploded in the magazine of the No. 4 5-inch gun after bouncing off a roll of cable.

Eighteen men were killed instantly, including two burned beyond recognition by the incendiary fires spreading in the hangar and main deck aft.

The blast in the magazine blew a hole in the port side of the ship. As seawater poured in the ship began flooding. An order by Verge to counterflood on the starboard side allowed the port side to rise above the waterline.

Meanwhile, the Curtiss was still at battle, and crewmen spotted a periscope and conning tower of a midget submarine which closed within 50 yards of the Curtiss whose guns were firing on it. The 2-man sub, which surfaced, fired a torpedo at the approaching Curtiss but narrowly missed and the torpedo continued on to run aground in a channel at Pearl City.

As the sub turned away and resubmerged, the Curtiss fired a direct hit on the conning tower, and the approaching destroyer Monaghan rammed the sub and dropped two depth charges on it, sinking it to the bottom of the harbor.

Fifty minutes after the first explosive awakened America to war, the second wave arrived to deliver more crippling effects.

The day’s battle ended with departure of the second wave of Japanese planes after a 1-hour, 45-minute engagement. Twenty of Tommy Hembree’s fellow crew members died with him on December 7, 1941. Some 60 others were wounded.

With the fading drone of the last plane to depart Pearl Harbor, carnage could be seen spreading out across the inland waterway from its wake. The sky that just two hours before was clear and bright with a peaceful Sunday morning countenance, was now a horizon of flames, pillars of smoke diverse in shades, gushes of fire, and crumpled and warped shapes of metal that once had been ships. Surface waters that awakened that morning to an undisturbed stillness were now aflame in an oil soaked sheen.

Buildings, ammunition and fuel dumps joined the list of features damaged or destroyed from bombs, tropedoes, and strafings from wing-mounted machine guns. Some 92 US Navy planes were destroyed and another 31 damaged. The Army Air Force saw 77 of its planes destroyed and another 128 damaged.

Three cruisers and three destroyers were damaged but none were destroyed. One among damaged auxiliary ships was destroyed,

Eight battleships lay damaged or dying in the waters of Pearl Harbor, including the USS Arizona that took a direct hit into its magazine, setting off a cataclysmic explosion that culminated in the loss of 1,177 officers and sailors from among its 1,512 member crew. The Arizona sank to the bottom of the harbor where the main body of the ship still lies. Its massive superstructure, still above the surface, was removed in 1942 and the USS Arizona Memorial built over the ship and dedicated on May 30, 1962. It receives thousands of visitors yearly, many on December 7. On August 23, 1994 Congress designated every December 7 as National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.

The Arizona Memorial is under the control of the National Park Service, although the Navy retains title to the Arizona. Although no longer a commissioned ship, as some believe, it reserves the right to have the American flag fly over it for perpetuity, a practice started in 1950.

The 60,000 or so sailors and other military personnel at Pearl and surrounding bases stationed there that morning had witnessed and experienced America’s first day of action in World War II, a war that would see America engaged for 1,340 more days in Europe and the Pacific until Japan’s formal surrender.

Heroism by American servicemen was as prevalent as enemy planes in the skies over Pearl. Men plunged into burning waters to help wounded and injured buddies. Others ordered crewmen to escape from harms way before leaving themselves and died doing so. Gunners returning fire refused to leave their stations despite severe wounds and among them shot down attacking planes.

Fourteen Medals of Honor were awarded for actions above and beyond the call of duty at Pearl Harbor, and a 15th was awarded to a chief aviation ordnanceman at the Kaneohe Naval Air Station. The recipients ranged in rank from admiral to the lowest enlisted seaman. Eleven were awarded posthumously.

Among the heroics were the actions of nine civilian firefighters of the Honolulu Fire Department who raced into the harbor still under attack and were killed fighting the continuing infernos side by side with sailors. In a rare act, all nine, although civilians, were posthumously awarded Purple Hearts that were presented to their families.

Awakening a Sleeping Giant

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, supreme commander of the Japanese Imperial Navy, was not in a celebratory mood like others after the successful implementation of the surprise attack he personally planned.

He reportedly said, or reportedly wrote in his diary – although some contend there is no evidence to such – “I fear all we have done is awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

Whether he did or did not, a sleeping giant did awaken.

From the ashes of Pearl Harbor.

Some 100 ships, large and small were at Pearl Harbor, and 21 reportedly took hits and were damaged or submerged, although the harbor was not deep enough for a complete sinking.

Of the eight battleships serving in that role, only the USS Arizona and the USS Oklahoma could not be returned to the active fleet. The Pennsylvania, Maryland, Tennessee, California, West Virginia and the USS Nevada would be repaired and go off to fight decisive battles in the war in such campaigns as Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, Luzon, Guadalcanal, Santa Cruz Islands, the Aleutian Islands, and Palau.

The USS Nevada even engaged the Germans in the Atlantic Ocean before returning to the Pacific, including firing on Normandy, site of the Allied invasion of Europe on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

Even the USS Arizona got a measure of retribution. Parts of the ship that were salvageable were repaired and assembled on other ships. Guns from Turret II of the Arizona were straightened, relined, and installed on the USS Nevada. The guns were fired on the Japanese-held islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa during U.S. invasions to take the islands.

Tommy’s ship, the Curtiss, underwent repairs at Pearl Harbor before returning to the United States for a complete overhaul. It would return to earn seven battlestars in the Pacific, including in the campaigns at Tarawa, Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Saipan, Guam and Okinawa. At Okinawa, the Curtiss was hit for a second time by a kamikaze like the hit it took at Pearl Harbor. This one ended its World War II service.

Two of the ships coming under attack and hit at Pearl Harbor, the battleship West Virginia, and the light cruiser USS Detroit, also were present in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945 during formal surrender ceremonies by Japan.

Of the entire Japanese task force participating in the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 – to that time was the most powerful task force ever assembled – the escort destroyer Ushio was the only ship or vessel to survive World War II.

A sailor’s identity is lost

For Tommy Hembree, his death was just the beginning of a long journey before he could be embraced by his family and receive burial with full military honors in one of America’s most hallowed resting place for its service men and women.

The journey’s end would not be for 60 years.

On the night of December 7, 1941, the commander-in-chief, U.S. Forces Pacific, was given a complete review of the day’s horrific outcome. It included the report of two unidentified bodies being removed from the USS Curtiss and taken to the U.S. Naval Hospital at Pearl Harbor.

In the confusing immediate aftermath, it was uncertain who the two were. In time, because they could not be found, and other Curtiss crewmen were being accounted for, it was strongly suspected but unconfirmed for decades that the two badly-burned sailors were Seaman First Class Tommy Hembree and Seaman First Class Albert Rice of Coventry, Rhode Island.

But, uncertainty remained and Tommy’s mother, Elizabeth, would be months in waiting before receiving notification that all evidence pointed to her son having been killed during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

A friend to Elizabeth had written the Navy in early 1942 seeking answers for Tommy’s mother. A response dated February 19, 1942 was bureaucratically confusing.

“The bureau (of Navigation) is glad to inform you that no report has been received to the effect that he is other than alive and well and in the event of a report of his serious injury or death his mother will be immediately notified…The latest report received in the bureau shows Hembree still serving on the USS Curtiss.”

Yet, by December 19, just 12 days after the attack, a detail on the USS Curtiss already was inventorying and assembling Tommy’s personal effects, noting on a form of a “Hospital Ticket” that he had died.

His possessions variously included three pair of shoes; six pair of socks; three blue and five white Navy trousers; one dress blue Navy jumper; five undress whites, and two undress blue jumpers; 19 handkerchiefs; four white Navy hats and two caps; one pair of gloves; shoe, scrub and hair brushes; two undershirts; four towels; bathing suit, two neckerchiefs and a pullover jumper; and bedding and a wisp broom.

By early February they were being made ready for Tommy’s mother. In May, she was informed by letter from the executive officer of the USS Curtiss they were being sent to her. He also told her a diamond engagement ring was found among Tommy’s possessions and that it was being returned separately to her. On receiving it, Tommy’s mother returned it to Behrman’s Jewelers and Tommy’s payments were returned to Elizabeth.

By then, she had been informed her son likely was killed at Pearl Harbor, receiving a letter dated April 10, 1942.

“There have been several conflicting reports concerning your son,” wrote Randall Jacobs, chief of the Navigation Bureau. “After a complete muster of the known dead, wounded, and missing, your son could not be located.

“Owing to the time which has now elapsed without your son having been reported aboard any other vessel or activity, the Department (of the Navy) is now reluctantly forced to the conclusion that he was lost in the disaster of December 7th 1941.”

Jacobs commended Tommy’s mother “for being so patient and understanding” in light of the “turmoil and confusion” that came out of the Pearl Harbor attack.

He offered Mrs. Hembree “My heartfelt sympathy in this sorrow, trusting that the knowledge that your son lost his life while upholding the principles of our country, will in some small manner, serve to lighten the blow of your loss.”

On April 23, she wrote back to the Washington, D.C.-based Jacobs, warmly expressing her appreciation.

“I wish to thank you for the kind letter sent to me in regards to the loss of my son,” she penned. “As of yet I have not received official notice from the government but no doubt I shall soon.

“Thanking you again, I am sincerely Mrs. Elizabeth Hembree, Kennewick, Wa.”

Four months later, she received a letter from Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox that he had written on August 6, 1942 and sent to her home at 12 W. Third Avenue in Kennewick.

“I desire to offer to you my personal condolence in the death of your son,” the Navy secretary wrote. “It is hoped that you may find comfort in the thought that he made the supreme sacrifice upholding the highest traditions of the Navy in the defense of his country.”

Elizabeth became a Gold Star mother for recognition of having lost a son in war.

Nearly 14 months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Randall Jacobs again corresponded with Elizabeth, informing her that “the Bureau takes pleasure in forwarding the Purple Heart and certificate awarded your late son, Thomas Hembree, Apprentice Seaman, U.S. Navy.”

Four years later in February 1947, she received the American Defense Service Medal with Fleet Clasp, and the World War II Victory Medal for Tommy’s Service.

Other awards accorded him included: The Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with Battle Star; the Pearl Harbor Commemorative Medal given only to veterans of the attack; and the Gold Star Lapel Button.

On December 9, Two days after the attack, the remains of the two unidentified sailors on the Curtiss were buried in Nuuanu Cemetery on Oahu. They were identified only as “Unknown X-24,” and “Unknown X-25.” Six years later they were exhumed for further positive identification efforts but Tommy’s identity was again denied.

On September 2, 1949, the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific was dedicated in Punchbowl Crater on Oahu, and is commonly referred to as Punchbowl National Cemetery.

Suspecting, but still not confirming remains X-24 was that of Tommy, the Navy wrote to the Hembree family inquiring if they wanted his remains returned to Kennewick, or to be interred in the 116-acre cemetery. Mystified that the Navy would inquire about Tommy;’s final resting place without confirming that it was Tommy, the family decided nevertheless to have the remains laid to rest at Punchbowl.

Grave C-258

The remains, gently and carefully wrapped in a wool blanket, with “US Navy” markings, was buried once again, this time in one of the nation’s most hallowed cemeteries for service women and men.

Punchbowl had 252 total plots marked “unknown” for 653 killed at Pearl Harbor. The remains of X-24 were placed in Grave C-258.

Unknown to Tommy and unknown to Ray Emory, they shared a kinship on December 7, 1941.

While Tommy was heading to battle stations on the USS Curtiss near the Middle Loch of Pearl Harbor, far across Ford Island to the Southeast Loch feeding to the mainland, the 20-year-old Navy seaman Emory was doing the same aboard the cruiser USS Honolulu. He took to manning a 50-caliber machine gun firing rounds at the marauding Japanese aircraft.

It would be nearly half a century, but the kinship was renewed in 1989. By now, Emory, a member of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, was a historian of not only Pearl Harbor, but of Punchbowl itself.

He went on to participate in a number of Pacific battles after the Curtiss was repaired. In 1946 he was discharged from the Navy and settled in the Pacific Northwest where he acquired a degree in architecture from the University of Washington, pursuing that as a career.

When he retired, Emory settled in Hawaii and pursued what became a passion,-- helping bring identities to his fellow Pearl Harbor veterans now known only as “unknown.”

Day after day through the years he had visited Punchbowl and by 1989 had cataloged every single one of the 18,093 buried there who were casualties of World War II. They included cataloging every Pearl Harbor victim buried there.

In a set aside of his Hawaiian home in Kahala, a clearinghouse of materials and information filled the office he dubbed the “War Room,” including crew rosters of every ship, photographs of cemetery gravesites, and burial records. When computers became common for personal use, he acquired one and filled it with all the handwritten data he had acquired in his research.

With bulldog tenacity, he pushed, prodded, pummeled at a bureaucracy whose regulations at the time put up a barrier to identifications of unknowns. His determination to push for identification led to his figuratively being thrown out of offices he kept coming back to.

In the end, adversaries to his efforts became admirers, and laid the foundation for legislation that broke down barriers and opened doors to identification. His personal tenacity led to gravestones being made for all unknowns of the USS Arizona, and by 2015, identifications of 143 of 388 unknowns from the USS Oklahoma came out of his efforts.

The Search Begins

It was the same dogged determination that led him to uncover Tommy’s identity even before the others he was successful at. Tommy’s sister, Helen Braidwood, in 1989 visiting Punchbowl for the second time, was helped by a cemetery worker who called Emory.

The Pearl Harbor survivor and researcher knew from his work that Tommy and Seaman First Class Wilson Albert Rice were the only Curtiss crewmen still not identified. He offered to help identify Braidwood’s little brother. Further help came from the halls of Congress with Patsy Mink, Hawaii’s longtime and highly respected congresswoman, pushing through the legislation that was instrumental in allowing for another exhumation of the remains. On January 31, 2001, nearly 60 years after the Pearl Harbor attack, the remains of X-24 were recovered for another investigative look.

Present for the recovery was U.S. Army 1st lieutenant Ed LaRosa, an army ranger stationed at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii,. He was invited to be present when what was suspected to be his great uncle’s remains were removed.

By now, Helen Braidwood had passed away. None of Tommy’s siblings lived to see him identified.

Tommy’s mother, Elizabeth, who as a young woman liked going by “Lizzie” and signed her marriage license accordingly, died at age 70 on January 27, 1953, nearly half-a-century before Tommy’s remains were identified.

But this gentle woman from a quiet Kennewick neighborhood, left a legacy stretching from heroism at Pearl Harbor, to generations leading exemplary lives, including two sons, Walter and George, who received honors for their years serving the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers after their own military service in World War II.

One daughter, Helen, interspersed her insistent efforts to bring closure for the family by her efforts to identify her brother with a dedication to community involvement throughout her adult life. Elizabeth’s granddaughter Marion Price, the daughter of Tommy’s sister, June Bailey, shared the quest for identification by giving her DNA. Elizabeth’s great grandson, Ed LaRosa who was the young officer present when Tommy’s remains were exhumed in 2001, retired in 2021 after a 35-year Army career, most as a Special Forces officer.

Today, Lizzie’s legacy extends to great, great, great grandchildren, the younger of which as they grow older, will learn of their uncle four generations removed who died on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941 with 2,402 others defending his country at Pearl Harbor:

Helen and Tommy’s niece, Beth LaRosa, the daughter of Tommy’s brother, Walter, at the time living in Seattle but now back to her Tri-City roots and living in Pasco, picked up the torch carried so long by her Aunt Helen. Beth continued the pursuit to confirm it was Tommy buried in Grave 258.

Beth, the mother of Army career officer Ed LaRosa, graduated as Beth Hembree from Kennewick High School in 1967. Her sister, Sara, now living in Pasco with her husband Mark Jansen, a retired Washington State Patrol trooper, graduated from Kennewick High in 1970.

The legislation permitting the exhumation required DNA be taken from a relative, and the specific DNA to be taken in this case required it come from one of Tommy’s two sisters, or their offspring. It could not be taken from a line of his brothers.

In December 2000, Marion Price, provided a blood sample with her DNA.

To the surprise of scientists at the Armed Force DNA Identification Laboratory in Maryland, and the Central Identification Laboratory (CIL) in Hawaii, DNA could not be extracted from either the bones or the teeth of X-24. No one could figure out why the remains would not give up its secrets, leaving nothing to compare with Marion’s DNA.

They went back to the old-fashioned way of identification by using the basics of their trade, forensic anthropology.

A biological profile was compiled seeking answers to age, race, sex, and height of the skeletol remains by using new techniques and precise standards.

A careful examination of teeth determined the age of the deceased to be between 16 and 19 years old. Further examination computed the person to be 5-feet, 9 ¾ inches tall. Combining features of hips and skull, overall size of arm and leg bones, the remains were confirmed to be what thought – it was a man and not a woman.

An examination of service records began eliminating Rice, Tommy’s only other unidentified shipmate aboard the Curtiss, and all physical evidence matched Tommy’s body type.

Next came a probe of dental evidence by a CIL dentist who conducted a thorough examination of every tooth in the remains.

Comparing them to dental records of Tommy and Rice, a combination of fillings, cavities, and extracted teeth pointed right at Tommy and excluded Rice.

“We had our man,” noted Dr. Robert Mann, deputy scientific director of CIL, in his book Forensic Detective in which he chronicled in detail the efforts to identify Tommy.

The United States Navy Honors a Sailor’s Sailor

For this effort and others that were successes in identifying many of the unknowns from Pearl Harbor directly from his efforts, Ray Emory’s country and his Navy came to honor the man who once was shunned by government bureaucrats. In 2012 the U.S. Navy and the National Service honored him for his work that became a foundation for creation of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency now in use.

In June 2018, he was 97 years old, and now, just a month after the passing of his wife, “Ginny,” he decided on the need to leave his beloved Hawaii to live with a son in Idaho. He wanted one last visit to Pier Bravo 21 where 76 ½ years before the USS Honolulu had been moored and where Ray stood on her deck returning fire against attacking Japanese aircraft at Pearl Harbor.

It was to be a brief quiet visit taking in remembrances without anyone going about their normal complement of activities on Navy Pier Bravo 21 knowing who the frail elderly man was as he stood taking in the waterfront sites accompanied by the silence of his memories.

On this June 19 Tuesday as he was helped from the car that had brought him to where it all started, what Ray Emory saw was not a harbor of blue but a sea of white.

A dock-side honor cordon stood tall and straight for Ray to pass through to where his ship had been berthed. A ship-rail line of 510 officers and men and women of the United States Navy stretched the length of a football field from the rails of modern Navy warships at berth. All, who knew from readings what Ray knew personally, were attired in dress whites, standing at attention first to salute the former boatswain’s mate, and then to cheer him.

Brian Fort, a 2-star Navy admiral and commander of Navy Region Hawaii and Naval Air Surface Group Middle Pacific, spoke of the one-time Navy enlisted man who went to war from day one, and returned to a lifetime of remembrance for those who didn’t live beyond that first day.

He never forgot Pearl Harbor, and on what turned out to be not a quiet last goodbye but an emotional farewell riveted with honors for this man who had done so much, the deeply moved Emory told those who touchingly surprised him on the same pier that more than seven decades before he had been horrifically surprised, that this, too, was a day he would “never forget.”

Ray Emory died 62 days later in a Boise, Idaho hospital on August 20, 2018. He was returned to Hawaii and interred by Ginny at Diamond Head Memorial Park.

The Hembree family’s admiration, appreciation and genuine affection for the man responsible for finding Tommy, led Tommy’s

sister Helen to give the Purple Heart awarded Tommy’s mother to the husband of Ray Emory’s daughter living in Seattle.

A Family Gathers to Salute a Fallen Uncle

Under a paralleling beautiful Hawaii sky that had greeted Pearl Harbor sailors, soldiers, airmen and Marines after a peaceful sunrise on December 7, 1941, another greeted 17 family members of Tommy Hembree over the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific – Punchbowl –on March 5, 2002.

They had arrived from Washington, California and Florida to be present when Seaman Apprentice Thomas Hembree, was buried with full military honors and full recognition in a moving 35-minute ceremony.

Many of Tommy’s descendants present for the honors afforded the fallen sailor more than 60 years after his death had not known each other before the long, challenging effort went into identifying him. They became close.

“Uncle Tommy has not died in vain,” said his niece, Beth LaRosa, speaking at her uncle’s service. “We would not have gotten to know each other without this identification process.”

Family photos and notes were placed in Tommy’s casket before it was lowered into its place of honor at Punchbowl. Sealed over that place of honor was a headstone. It bore the name of this sailor, unnamed for decades, his rank as a sailor in the United States Navy; the name of his ship, the proud USS Curtiss, battle tested on the first day of World War II; and the dates Tommy was born – May 17, 1924– and the day he died doing his duty – December 7, 1941.

Seaman First Class Thomas Hembree was at rest.

His family was at peace.

Tommy Hembree’s engagement in battle could be measured in a multiplicity of minutes. For a nation to which Tommy made the supreme sacrifice in war, it is in his debt and mourns his death – for an eternity.