Anchorage Daily News

The remains of a Navy seaman who went missing in action in World War II were reburied Thursday at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio two years after they were found on Kiska Island.

The Defense Department earlier this week identified the remains as those of Seaman 2nd Class Dee Hall, 18, of Oklahoma.

Hall was one of seven crewmen aboard a PBY-5 Catalina flying boat that left Kodiak Island on June 14, 1942, to attack Japanese targets in Kiska Harbor in the Aleutians, the department said in a news release.

The plane crashed on the side of Kiska Volcano in bad weather and under heavy Japanese anti- aircraft fire.

The wreckage was found after the United States retook the island from the Japanese in August 1943. The remains of the crew were buried in a common grave marked "Seven U.S.N. Airmen" with a wooden marker. After the war, attempts to locate the common grave were unsuccessful.

In 2002, a wildlife biologist found the wreckage. The crash site was excavated in August 2003 and the remains were found buried nearby.

Hall was born in Sayre, Okla., and moved with his family to Mission, Texas, before he joined the service at the age of 17, his sister, Lee Gordon, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from her home in Floresville, Texas.

"Before he joined the service, he was just a kid," said Gordon, 74. "He didn't even live long enough to have a Social Security card. I asked my brother if he ever even had a girlfriend, and he said, 'I don't think he did.' "

Hall is survived by five other siblings who live in Texas, Gordon said, including James Hall of McKinney, Wynema Miller of San Antonio, Lois Duggan of Canyon Lake, Myrl Wood of Texarkana and Frank Hall of LaVernia.

"We're just so grateful that he's finally coming home after 63 years," Gordon said. "With all the negative talk about the military ... they're still finding people and bringing them home to their families. To me, that's important.

"They never gave up."