A sailor born in Alexander and died aboard the USS Oklahoma during the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery on Feb. 23, according to the U.S. Navy Office of Community Outreach.

Born on Oct. 22, 1913, Gunner’s Mate 3rd Class Herman Schmidt was raised in Sheridan Wyoming. The family currently resides in California.

In all, 429 USS Oklahoma sailors lost their lives.

When the ship was righted in 1944, only 35  of the remains were able to be identified. The remains of 388  unidentified sailors and marines were first interred as “unknowns” in two cemeteries. All were disinterred in 1947, in an unsuccessful attempt to identify more personnel. 

In 1950, all unidentified remains from Oklahoma were buried in 61 caskets in 45 graves at the  National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also known as “Punchbowl.”

In April 2015, the Department of Defense, as part of a policy change that established threshold criteria for disinterment of unknowns, announced that the unidentified remains of the crew members of Oklahoma would be exhumed for DNA analysis, with the goal of returning  identified remains to their families.

On Dec. 7, 2021, the 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the final 33 sailors unidentified by DNA were reinterred at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

About the Oklahoma

Built in 1912, the USS Oklahoma was among almost half of the U.S. Pacific Fleet – consisting of 150 vessels – that lay at anchor at Naval Base Pearl Harbor, Hawaii that Sunday morning when attacked by air forces of the Japanese Empire. Moored in Battleship Row beside the USS Maryland, the  Oklahoma was among the first vessels hit.

When the attack began just before 8 a.m. Sunday morning, many of the crew were sleeping in their racks below decks and never made it up to the main deck. At approximately 7:55 a.m. the first wave of Japanese aircraft struck the Oklahoma with three aerial torpedoes.

The Oklahoma began capsizing as the Japanese planes strafed the deck with machine gun fire. After being struck by six more torpedoes, the Oklahoma’s port side was torn open and within 15 minutes of the first torpedo strike, she had rolled completely over, trapping those crew members not fortunate enough to escape within her hull.

USS Oklahoma was decommissioned in September 1944 and sold for salvage. However, the ship was lost in a storm while being towed to California.