Eighty years after he was killed aboard the USS Oklahoma when Japanese forces bombed Pearl Harbor, a WWII hero returns home.
Navy Firefighter 1st Class George Price of Dallas City, Ill., will be laid to rest May 4 at Harris Cemetery in Dallas City, the final resting place of his parents.
“The family is thrilled to bring him home and bury him with his family,” said Joyce Martin of Burlington, a niece of Price. “None of us (cousins) had ever met him, but we grew up hearing his (five) sisters talk about their brother, George.”
Price entered the Navy from Illinois and was assigned to the USS Oklahoma. He was on this ship on December 7, 1941, when the ship was attacked by surprise by Japanese forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and capsized. He was 23 years old.
For decades his remains went unidentified, having been buried as an unknown in the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu in the 1940s, one of 394 sailors and marines who died on Oklahoma.
In 2015, the DPAA received permission to exhume and reexamine the unknown remains associated with Oklahoma.
Price’s remains were exhumed and incorporated into the DPAA laboratory as part of the USS Oklahoma project.
He was identified on August 3, 2021 using DNA.
His remains will be returned from Nebraska for his funeral.