SHAWANO (NBC 26) — The remains of a Shawano airman killed during World War II have been identified, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced Tuesday.
The agency announced the remains of U.S. Army Air Forces Pvt. Herbert E. McLaughlin, 31, of Shawano, were accounted for in December of 2024. The family of the airman was recently briefed on his identification.
Pvt. McLaughlin was killed in the Pearl Harbor attack on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, on December 7,1941.
Days after the attack, Navy personnel recovered remains of soldiers and airmen who were killed, and those remains were buried in Oahu. In 1947, members of the American Graves Registration Service, tasked with recovering and identifying fallen personnel from World War II, disinterred the remains and transferred them to a laboratory to attempt identification. They were unable to confirm the identity of 12 of those men, burying them again in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP), known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu.
In 1949, a military board classified those who could not be identified as non-recoverable, including McLaughlin, according to the release.
In June of 2019, DPAA exhumed those 12 unknown remains from the Punchbowl. Using anthropological analysis, circumstantial evidence, mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome DNA analysis, Pvt. McLaughlin's remains were successfully identified.
According to the release, Pvt. McLaughlin will be buried in Shawano, on a date yet to be determined.
