SHAWANO, WI- After more than eight decades, the remains of a Shawano man killed during the attack on Pearl Harbor have finally been identified.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced on May 20 that U.S. Army Air Forces Pvt. Herbert E. McLaughlin, 31, was officially accounted for on Dec. 17, 2024. McLaughlin was one of 91 service members killed during the Japanese attack on Hickam Field in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941.
An aerial photographer assigned to the Headquarters Squadron, 17th Air Base Group, McLaughlin had been stationed at Hickam since December 1940, having enlisted in the Army just two months prior in October.
The attack on Hickam Field followed the initial strike on Pearl Harbor and lasted nearly four hours. Japanese bombers and fighter planes targeted airfields, hangars, supply depots, and personnel. While McLaughlin was confirmed to have died in the attack, the exact details of his death remain unknown.
McLaughlin’s remains were recovered and initially buried in Schofield Barracks Cemetery on Dec. 9, 1941. In 1947, the American Graves Registration Service exhumed remains from that cemetery in hopes of identifying them at the Central Identification Laboratory. At the time, 12 casualties from Hickam Field—including McLaughlin—could not be identified and were reburied as unknowns in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, commonly called the Punchbowl.
In 1949, McLaughlin was officially classified as non-recoverable.
That changed in June 2019, when DPAA researchers exhumed those 12 unknowns. Through anthropological analysis, circumstantial evidence, and advanced DNA testing conducted by the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, McLaughlin’s identity was confirmed.
A 1928 graduate of Shawano High School and son of Mary A. McLaughlin, Herbert McLaughlin was the first Shawano County serviceman to die in World War II. In his honor, the local Shawano VFW Post 2723 bears his name.
His name is etched in the Courts of the Missing at the Punchbowl, where a rosette will now be placed beside it, signifying his identification and return.
A burial with full military honors will take place in Shawano on a date yet to be determined.
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