Minnesota Sailor killed at Pearl Harbor is coming home

Mary Divine, Pioneer Press
Updated ·2 min read

Nearly 83 years after he was killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor, Navy Fire Controlman 3rd Class William Gusie’s remains will be returned to his home state of Minnesota.

Gusie, who graduated from White Bear Lake High School in 1939, was assigned to the battleship USS Oklahoma, which was moored at Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, when the ship was attacked by Japanese aircraft on Dec. 7, 1941.

The Oklahoma sustained multiple torpedo hits, which caused it to quickly capsize. The attack on the ship resulted in the deaths of 429 crewmen, including Gusie, according to a news release from Hawaii-based Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency. For his service, Gusie was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart.

Gusie, who was 19 when he was killed, was one of 13 service members accounted for by the Defense Department agency tasked with recovering U.S. troops listed as missing in action or prisoners of war.

From December 1941 to June 1944, unidentified remains from the USS Oklahoma were collected and interred in the Halawa and Nu’uanu Cemeteries on Oahu. The American Graves Registration Service disinterred the remains from the Oklahoma in 1947, but were able to identify only 35 of the men at the time, according to the news release.

The unidentified remains were buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu. They stayed there for 68 years before the DPAA exhumed the unknown remains for testing in 2015.

The DPAA used dental and anthropological analysis and scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA analysis to identify Gusie, the news release states.

Gusie was accounted for on Sept. 23, 2021 – nearly 80 years after his death – but the announcement was withheld until now so family members could get a full briefing on his identification, according to the news release.

Gusie will be laid to rest on June 12 at Fort Snelling National Cemetery

Gusie’s name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at the Punchbowl, along with the others who are missing from WWII. A rosette will now be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for, officials said.

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