HONOLULU (AP) — More than 75 years after nearly 2,400 members of the U.S. military were killed in the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, some who died on Dec. 7, 1941, are finally being laid to rest in cemeteries across the United States. In 2015, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency exhumed nearly 400 sets of remains from the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii after determining that advances in forensic science and genealogical help from families could make identifications possible. They were all on the USS Oklahoma, which capsized during the attack, and had been buried as unknowns after the war.

Altogether, 429 sailors and Marines on board the Oklahoma were killed. Only 35 were identified in the years immediately after the attack. The Oklahoma’s casualties were second only to the USS Arizona, which lost 1,177 men. As of earlier this month, the agency has identified 186 sailors and Marines from the Oklahoma that were previously unidentified.

FILE – In this July 7, 2018 file photo, U.S. Navy sailors remove the casket with the remains of Seaman First Class Leon Arickx from a hearse at Sacred Heart Cemetery where they will be put to rest in Osage, Iowa. Arickx’ remains, which were unidentifiable after his death after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor in 1941, were identified through DNA testing earlier this year. More than three-quarters of a century after the devastating attack killed nearly 2,400 in Hawaii, the bodies of some sailors killed at Pearl Harbor are finally being laid to rest. (Chris Zoeller/Globe-Gazette via AP, File)

Slowly, the remains are being sent to be reburied in places like Traer, Iowa, and Ontanogan, Michigan. Hundreds of people filled a Catholic church in Traer, Iowa, in November for William Kvidera’s funeral. The solemn ceremony in his hometown included full military honors, the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reported . “It’s something like a dream,” his brother, John Kvidera, 91, said. John Kvidera was 14 when he found out about the bombings at Pearl Harbor and remembers huddling around a radio to find out what was going on. The family initially received a telegram saying William, the oldest of six siblings, was missing in action. A telegram in February 1943 notified the family of his death.

More than 76 years after he died, the remains of Navy Seaman 1st Class Leon Arickx were buried on a brilliant summer day at a small cemetery amid the cornfields of northern Iowa. Hundreds gathered in July for Arickx’s graveside service at Sacred Heart Cemetery outside Osage, Iowa, in a sparsely populated farming region just south of Minnesota, where Arickx grew up. Although they didn’t have Arickx’s remains, his family held a memorial service and placed a grave marker at Sacred Heart Cemetery in 1942. When his remains were finally returned, they were buried at a site not far away.