PHOENIX — An 18-year-old U.S. Navy sailor from Arizona who died at Pearl Harbor was buried with full military honors on Friday after his remains were identified last year, about 80 years after the Japanese attack.
Carl Johnson, a U.S. Navy seaman 1st Class and a Purple Heart recipient, was aboard the USS West Virginia near Hawaii when multiple torpedoes hit the side of the battleship to which he was assigned in 1941. About 100 crewman on the vessel died.
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Johnson was buried at Greenwood Memory Lawn cemetery in Phoenix with a 21-gun salute and the folding and presentation of the U.S. flag to the family.
“It was always my grandparent’s hopes, and their siblings … that Carl would be eventually found and returned to them — today that prayer has been answered,” Johnson’s nephew Carl Dahl said.
At least four generations of his relatives gathered for the funeral. The Patriot Guard Riders, Navy and Air Force personnel, and a Pearl Harbor survivor were also at Johnson’s burial.
“To see finally after nearly 80 years that we were able to identify the remains and he was able to come home and be buried next to his parents, next to my grandparents, his sister, it’s an amazing thing. It’s a miracle,” Dahl’s son Bob Dahl said.
