On Tuesday, 80 years after his terrible passing, a United States Navy seaman who perished in the assault on Pearl Harbor will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
The COVID-19 epidemic delayed Herbert “Bert” Jacobson’s funeral by two years after his corpse was found in 2019.
On December 7, 1941, nine Japanese torpedoes slammed into the USS Oklahoma, killing nearly 400 sailors and marines, including Jacobson. He passed away at the age of 21.
As part of Project Oklahoma, which the Defense Department started in 2015 to attempt to identify the corpses of almost 400 troops who perished on the Oklahoma but whose identities remained unknown, Jacobson’s remains were identified.
The identification and burial of Jacobson would finally provide them some closure, according to his family, who said they had long since given up hope of ever learning for sure what had happened to him.
According to Bert McDonald’s nephew Brad McDonald, ‘This has sort of been an unsolved mystery and it brings us closure to finally know what happened to Bert, where he is, and that he’s being properly put to rest after being classified as an unknown for so long.’
Prior to the start of World War Two, Jacobson, who was stationed on the USS Oklahoma, was from the little town of Grayslake in northern Illinois.
Uncertainty surrounds the precise manner in which the young sailor died on December 7, but McDonald said that witnesses informed his family that Jacobson had spent many hours ferrying soldiers from the ship to land before to the assault.
Jacobson “was sleeping in his bunk and died before he even realised a war was going on,” according to one of Jacobson’s closest friends in the Navy, who spoke to the family. But we’re not really sure,” McDonald added.
After the assault, the Oklahoma sank for two years before being discovered and rescued, at which point many of the 429 troops who perished aboard the ship could not be recognised. Their remains were interred in a neighbouring dormant volcano on the island of Hawaii.
Although countless attempts were made over the years, the identities of the great majority of those fatalities remained unknown. Some of those casualties were disinterred and identified.
The Defense Department then started Project Oklahoma in 2015 in the hopes that cutting-edge forensic technology would eventually provide useful information.
355 bodies have been identified thanks to the project, which was a huge success and included Jacobson’s in 2019.
McDonald said that the cost to his family of not knowing for sure what happened to Jacobson was high and that the situation only became worse with each unsuccessful identification attempt.
Every year on December 7, Jacobson’s mother reportedly sobbed, according to an Associated Press report.
According to McDonald, “She always had the hope the phone would ring and it would be Bert.”
McDonald said he wanted those members of his family who waited for answers for so long but never received them were still alive.
Regarding his grandparents, parents, and other loved ones, McDonald remarked, “I wish they could have witnessed this.”