Late US sailor reunites with shipmates at Pearl Harbour

The US Navy has fulfilled a Pearl Harbour survivor’s wish to join his shipmates killed in the attack once he had died.

Lee Soucy, who died last year at the age of 90, made his wish five years ago.

Yesterday, 70 years after dozens of his fellow sailors were killed when the USS Utah sank on December 7, 1941, a navy diver took a small urn containing Mr Soucy’s ashes and put it in a porthole of the ship.

The ceremony was one of five memorials being held this week for servicemen who lived through the Japanese attack on the US Pacific Fleet in Hawaii and wanted their remains placed in Pearl Harbour out of pride and affinity for those they left behind.

“They want to return and be with the shipmates that they lost during the attack,” said Jim Taylor, a retired sailor who coordinates the ceremonies.

The Japanese bombing killed 2,390 Americans and brought the United States into the World War II. A larger ceremony to remember all those who perished was held yesterday just before 8 a.m. Hawaii time ­– the same moment the devastating attack began.

Most of the 12 ships that sank or were beached that day were removed from the harbour, their metal hulls salvaged for scrap. Just the Utah and the USS Arizona remain.

The cremated remains of Vernon Olsen, who served aboard the Arizona, were interred on his ship during a sunset ceremony. The ashes of three other survivors were scattered in the harbour.

In 1941 Mr Soucy, the youngest of seven children, joined the navy fresh from high school so he would not burden his parents, was a pharmacist mate, trained to care for the sick and wounded.

He had just finished breakfast that Sunday morning when he saw planes dropping bombs on the US hangars. He rushed to his battle station after feeling the Utah lurch, but soon heard the call to abandon ship as the vessel began sinking.

He swam to shore, where he made a makeshift first aid centre to help the wounded and dying and worked without a rest for two days.

Mr Soucy’s daughter Margaret said her parents had initially planned to have their ashes interred together at their church in Plainview, Texas. But her father changed his mind after visiting Pearl Harbour for the 65th anniversary in 2006.