Pearl Harbor's 'Forgotten Ship'
Many remains of the USS Utah dead still are entombed in the ship, which still lies where it was sunk and strafed by the Japanese attackers exactly 81 years ago today.
Those killed included one Nebraskan — George LaRue, a gunner’s mate from Sutherland — and four Iowans: Forrest Perry of Northwood, Edwin Odgaard of Humboldt, Ralph E. Scott of Dubuque and Vernard Wetrich of Dexter. Scott’s brother, Melvin, also served on the Utah and survived.
It’s possible, though, that some remains that were recovered during a failed 1944 effort to salvage the Utah soon could be identified.
Earlier this year, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency disinterred 14 caskets from seven graves marked “unknown” at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, in Honolulu’s Punchbowl crater. Now they are being examined at the agency’s main lab in Hawaii. (DPAA’s second lab is at Offutt Air Force Base.)
The story of the USS Utah is a barely remembered footnote to the Pearl Harbor raid, compared with better-known ship casualties on Battleship Row such as the USS Arizona (1,177 dead) and USS Oklahoma (429 dead). It apparently was attacked by mistake.
“It bothered me that the Utah, nobody ever said anything about it,” said T.J. Cooper, of Coon Rapids, Minnesota, who authored a book in 2009 titled “The Men of the Utah, the Forgotten Ship of Pearl Harbor.”
