'Never resurfaced': 80 years after Pearl Harbor, beloved 'Cremo' buried at Arlington

Frances Griffin never got the chance to meet her uncle, who was among thousands killed at Pearl Harbor, when Japan launched its Dec. 7, 1941, attack on the U.S. naval base in Hawaii.

All the 81-year-old has of Frank Hryniewicz' memory is the family's deep lore and a heartbreaking letter written after his death from her father.

But, on Thursday, Griffin and her family will come together to see Hryniewicz' remains buried at Arlington National Cemetery in a full military ceremony.

Hryniewicz is one of hundreds of U.S. servicemembers killed aboard the USS Oklahoma, one of the first vessels hit during the attack. His remains were identified in the last decade thanks to a military DNA profiling project.

One family passes down lore of ancestor killed at Pearl Harbor

In 2019, the Navy reached Griffin's family to request DNA samples to help identify Hryniewicz' remains. Griffin's brother and nephew sent in their samples – her father, Hryniewicz' older brother, had died just three days before.

Griffin, a retired teacher, recalled her father's adoration of his beloved "kid brother." The youngest of five, Hryniewicz was "the baby of the family," Griffin said.

Hryniewicz enlisted in May of 1940 after a stint working at a family farm to help ends meet at the tail end of the Great Depression. After growing up in Three Rivers, Massachusetts, a small village of less than 3,000, he wanted to see the world, Griffin said.

But less than two years later, on his first assignment to the naval base in Hawaii, his life was cut short at 20. On the fateful December morning, Japanese planes strafed the deck of the Oklahoma, causing the ship to turn over and trapping Hryniewicz and his fellow sailors in its hull.

After a dayslong effort to rescue the sailors that could still be heard banging on the inside of the doomed ship, 429 people on the Oklahoma were pronounced dead. More than 2,400 people were killed in the attack that destroyed two other Navy ships.

"My uncle dove along with his mates into the water and never resurfaced," Griffin said.

Griffin held onto a letter passed down in the family that her father wrote to "Cremo," his baby brother's nickname, eight days after the attack.

"Darn your hide! Why in hell don't you write?" the letter begins. "Last Sunday we heard the Oklahoma had been sent to the bottom of Pearl Harbor, ever since then we've been sitting on pins and needles waiting to hear from you or from the Navy Department."

"I'm a lazy guy – and I don't see any sense in writing a letter if you're not going to get it," Griffin's father wrote. "So please write or wire, and in return you'll get a nice letter about twenty pages long – that's a promise."

The letter concludes with a heart-wrenching postscript: "You're now a uncle as of last Thursday 8:30 A.M." Griffin's oldest brother had just been born.

The Oklahoma wasn't flipped over until 1944, when the sailors' remains were recovered. They were disinterred and buried in 61 caskets and 45 graves at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. Only 35 were initially identified.

Military project identifies sailors killed at Pearl Harbor

But a renewed push to identify the remains from Oklahoma sailors kicked off in 2003, when the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency disinterred a single casket thought to contain the comingled remains of five servicemembers. In fact, it contained the partial remains of nearly 100.

After more than a decade of work, the agency disinterred the rest of the unidentified caskets and transferred them to a laboratory for further forensic analysis.

When the project ended in late 2021, 362 out of 394 sailors and marines previously unaccounted for aboard the USS Oklahoma had been identified.

"That was a project that, quite literally, took years," said Sean Everette, a spokesperson for the agency.

Everette said genealogists with the Navy collaborated with different branches of the military to track down family members, including Griffin's family. "They did have to contact all of these different families to get DNA reference samples so that we could match them with remains that we have," he said.

Once families are notified, military officials schedule a "full identification briefing," in which they lay out the options for funeral arrangements. Griffin and her family opted to have Hryniewicz buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Hryniewicz also left his mark on his family's home of Three Rivers, around 75 miles west of Boston. On Main Street lies Hryniewicz Park, a grassy area with a playground and a memorial stone honoring Hryniewicz and other fallen servicemembers from the village.

Griffin said she dedicated the park to her uncle in a town ceremony when she was just four years old. Last year, the park was rededicated in honor of the identification of his remains, local news reported.

10 family members come together in Arlington to bury Hryniewicz

At the burial ceremony, Hryniewicz will receive full military honors, including an Honor Guard accompaniment, a band, a 21-gun salute, and an American flag that is draped over the casket and given to the primary next of kin in attendance, according to Everette.

At least 10 members of the family traveled to Arlington for the occasion from across the country – Griffin and four of her children will be joined by her cousin from Massachusetts, her sister from Arizona and her brother from Maine.

To Griffin, the trip is more than just a family reunion – it's a chance to pay respects to an extraordinary life cut short.

"Burying him someplace where he would forever be honored as a fallen soldier, a member of the Armed Services, was important to us, that he be acknowledged for as long as the United States exists," Griffin said. "Here was a young man who made an ultimate sacrifice."

Cybele Mayes-Osterman is a breaking news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her on email at [email protected]. Follow her on X @CybeleMO.