Navy Fireman killed at Pearl Harbor to be buried after remains identified

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (WOIO/Gray News) - Navy Fireman 1st Class Beoin H. Corzatt of Arcanum, Ohio, will be laid to rest after his remains were finally identified eight decades after he was killed on the USS Oklahoma in Pearl Harbor.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency made the announcement Friday that he was accounted for on Dec. 17, 2020.

Corzatt was assigned to the battleship USS Oklahoma, which was moored at Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, when Japanese aircraft attacked the ship on Dec. 7, 1941.

Multiple torpedoes struck the USS Oklahoma and caused it to capsize. The attack on the ship claimed the lives of 429 crewmen, including 24-year-old Corzatt.

Navy personnel recovered the remains of the deceased crew from December 1941 to June 1944.

The recovered remains were then interred in the Halawa and Nu’uanu cemeteries.

Members of the American Graves Registration Service disinterred the remains of the U.S. casualties from the two cemeteries and took them to the Central Identification Laboratory at Schofield Barracks in September of 1947.

They were tasked with recovering and identifying fallen U.S. personnel in the Pacific Theatre.

The laboratory staff was only able to confirm the identities of 35 men from the USS Oklahoma at the time.

AGRS then buried the unidentified remains in 46 plots at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu.

A military board classified the fallen personnel who could not be identified as non-recoverable, including Corzatt, in October of 1949.

DPAA personnel exhumed the unidentified remains of the USS Oklahoma from the Punchbowl for analysis between June and November of 2015.

Scientists from DPAA used dental and anthropological analysis to identify Corzatt’s remains.

Armed Forces Medical Examiner System scientists also used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), Y chromosome DNA (Y-STR), and autosomal DNA (auSTR) analysis.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said Corzatt’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 be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for, the agency said.

Corzatt will be buried at the Punchbowl on Sept. 21, 2022.