Sailor killed at Pearl Harbor gets full military funeral after 73 years

Frances Griffin never had the opportunity to meet her uncle, who was among the thousands killed at Pearl Harbor when Japan launched its attack on the U.S. naval base in Hawaii on December 7, 1941.

All the 81-year-old remembers about Frank Hryniewicz is the family’s deep traditions and a heartbreaking letter that her father wrote after his death.

But on Thursday, Griffin and her family will gather to lay Hryniewicz’s remains to rest in a military ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.

Hryniewicz is one of hundreds of U.S. soldiers killed aboard the USS Oklahoma, one of the first ships hit in the attack. His remains were identified last decade thanks to a military DNA profiling project.

A family passes on the story of an ancestor killed at Pearl Harbor

In 2019, the Navy contacted Griffin’s family and requested DNA samples to identify Hryniewicz’s remains. Griffin’s brother and nephew sent in their samples – their father, Hryniewicz’s older brother, had died just three days earlier.

Griffin, a retired teacher, recalled her father’s adoration for his beloved “little brother.” Hryniewicz, the youngest of five children, was “the baby of the family,” Griffin said.

Hryniewicz enlisted in May 1940 after working for a time on his family farm to make ends meet at the end of the Great Depression. After growing up in Three Rivers, Massachusetts, a small village with fewer than 3,000 residents, Griffin said he wanted to see the world.

But less than two years later, on his first deployment to the naval base in Hawaii, his life ended at the age of 20. On that fateful December morning, Japanese planes strafed the deck of the Oklahoma, causing the ship to capsize and become stuck Hryniewicz and his fellow sailors in his hull.

After a days-long attempt to rescue the sailors, where knocking could still be heard inside the doomed ship, 429 people on the Oklahoma were declared dead. More than 2,400 people were killed in the attack, which destroyed two other Navy ships.

“My uncle dove into the water with his friends and never surfaced,” Griffin said.

Griffin kept a family-passed letter that her father wrote to “Cremo,” his little brother’s nickname, eight days after the attack.

“Damn skin! Why the hell aren’t you writing?” The letter begins. “Last Sunday we heard that the Oklahoma had been sent to the bottom of Pearl Harbor. We have been sitting anxiously waiting to hear from you or the Department of the Navy ever since.”

“I’m a lazy guy – and I don’t see the point in writing a letter if you don’t get it,” Griffin’s father wrote. “So please write or telegraph, in return you will receive a nice letter of about twenty pages – I promise.”

The letter ends with a heartbreaking postscript: “As of last Thursday, 8:30 a.m., you are now an uncle.” Griffin’s oldest brother had just been born.

The Oklahoma was not turned around until 1944, when the sailors’ remains were recovered. They were unearthed and buried in 61 coffins and 45 graves at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. Initially only 35 were identified.

Military project identifies sailors killed at Pearl Harbor

But in 2003, a renewed effort to identify the remains of Oklahoma sailors began when the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency unearthed a single coffin believed to contain the commingled remains of five soldiers. In fact, it contained the partial remains of nearly 100.

After more than a decade of work, the agency has dug up the rest of the unidentified coffins and transferred them to a laboratory for further forensic analysis.

When the project ended in late 2021, 362 of 394 Sailors and Marines previously missing aboard the USS Oklahoma had been identified.

“This has been a project that has literally taken years,” said Sean Everette, a spokesman for the agency.

Everette said Navy genealogists have been working with various branches of the military to trace family members, including Griffin’s family. “They had to contact all of these different families to get DNA reference samples so we could match them to the remains that we have,” he said.

Once families are notified, military officials will schedule a “full identity meeting” to outline options for funeral arrangements. Griffin and her family chose to have Hryniewicz buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Hryniewicz also left his mark at his family home in Three Rivers, about 75 miles west of Boston. On the main street is Hryniewicz Park, a grassy area with a playground and a memorial stone honoring Hryniewicz and other fallen soldiers in the village.

Griffin said she dedicated the park to her uncle as part of a city ceremony when she was just four years old. Last year, the park was rededicated in honor of the identification of his remains, local news reported.

Ten family members gather in Arlington to bury Hryniewicz

At the burial ceremony Hryniewicz According to Everette, he will receive full military honors, including an honor guard escort, a marching band, a 21-gun salute and an American flag draped over the casket and presented to key personnel in attendance.

At least 10 family members from across the country traveled to Arlington for the occasion – Griffin and four of her children are joined by her cousin from Massachusetts, her sister from Arizona and her brother from Maine.

For Griffin, the trip is more than just a family reunion – it’s an opportunity to pay respect to an extraordinary life cut short.

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