Mystery Solved
A Pearl Harbor unknown finally is identified thanks to some smart detective work by a private researcher and the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command.

A once-unidentified sailor was buried in Honolulu with full honors and a marker bearing his name — almost 65 years after he was killed in the Pearl Harbor attack. Seaman 2nd Class Warren Paul Hickok of Kalamazoo, Mich., was reinterred March 29 at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, called the Punchbowl.

Hickok was assigned to the USS Sicard and was dispatched to assist the crew of the USS Cummings when the Japanese attacked. The Cummings got underway with no casualties reported. Investigations surmised that Hickok could have been a casualty aboard the USS Pennsylvania.

Hickok’s remains were identified thanks to the efforts of Ray Emory, a Pearl Harbor survivor and researcher who uses information from deceased servicemembers’ military records to identify the unknowns.
 
Medical records offered the critical clues in identifying Hickok. The original examination of the unknown sailor revealed a healed right femur, and in paperwork from his enlistment to the service, Hickok wrote that he’d broken his right leg as a boy. The U.S. Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command exhumed the grave in June 2005 and announced the successful identification Dec. 16, 2005.

Two World War II Veterans Receive Purple Hearts

Leo Bach received his Purple Heart medal at Travis AFB, Calif., March 21. Bach suffered injuries to his right leg and back after bailing out of his B-17 Flying Fortress nearly 62 years ago, when he was a 24-year-old first lieutenant bombardier in the U.S. Army Air Corps. Bach and his crew were on a bombing run April 11, 1944, when they were forced to bail out of their aircraft near Berlin when it was damaged in a German attack. Bach was held in a POW camp, where he worried more about his Jewish heritage than seeking medical attention.

Clifford “Smokey” Martinez received his Purple Heart March 26 at the 2006 Bataan Memorial Death March at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., for wounds he received as a POW during World War II. Martinez was with the Army as an artillery observer on Bataan and was surrendered April 9, 1942. After more than a day on the death march, he escaped to Corregidor. He was recaptured in May 1942 and transported on a “hell ship” to Japan, where he remained imprisoned until Sept. 2, 1945.