By Daniela Vestal, U.S. Army Human Resources Command

FORT KNOX, Ky. – The remains of U.S. Army Pfc. Owen M. Norris, missing from World War II, will be interred Sept. 26 at West Liberty United Methodist Church Cemetery in Marriottsville, Maryland. Services and interment are being coordinated by Vaughn Greene Funeral Services.

Norris entered the service from Maryland and was a member of the 29th Chemical Decontamination Company.

On May 21, 1944, American personnel were loading ammunition and fuel onto ships moored in West Loch, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, when an explosion erupted on the landing ship LST 353.

The blast sent flaming debris onto a group of adjacent ships. More than one hundred Americans lost their lives in the incident, and massive fires burned for around 24 hours, hampering rescue and recovery efforts. Norris was killed in the disaster. Despite a search for survivors in the immediate aftermath, his remains were not identified.

Between May and June 1944, U.S. forces buried 47 sets of remains from the disaster whose identity could not be ascertained at the Halawa Naval Cemetery. These remains were later interred as Unknowns at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. In November 2024, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency personnel exhumed one of these sets of remains, designated X-286, and accessioned them into the DPAA laboratory for analysis.

There, scientists used modern forensic techniques to identify Norris.

DPAA accounted for Norris on July 7, 2026.

U.S. Army Human Resources Command’s Past Conflict Repatriations Branch plays a vital role in the process of identifying, locating and contacting subsequent generation family members of Soldiers missing or killed in action during WWII and the Korean War to positively identify previously undiscovered or unknown remains.

Media interested in covering and/or obtaining more information about the funeral and interment should contact Vaughn Greene Funeral Services, 410-655-0015.