Nevada Veterans Journal

The Marine Corps celebrated the 75th anniversary of its Mountain Warfare Training Center on Sept. 25 by reflecting on its importance during the Korean War in the 1950s and for future missions.

Established during the early years of the Korean War in 1951, the MCMWTC southwest of Gardnerville has trained thousands of Marines and other service members who found themselves assigned to cold-weather missions in mountainous terrain.

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She Sank the Same Day as USS Arizona - Then the Navy Gave Up Trying to Save Her

On December 7, 1941, USS Utah was moored off Ford Island when Japanese torpedoes tore through her hull. She rolled over and capsized within minutes, taking 58 men down with her. In early 1944, Navy salvage teams tried to right her using the same 17-winch parbuckling setup used on USS Oklahoma nearby. It stalled. After rotating to roughly 38 degrees, the hull slid deeper into harbor mud instead of rolling upright. Engineers determined full recovery was far too costly for an obsolete target ship with zero military value. By March 1944, operations were formally abandoned. Left resting on her side, she was eventually declared a permanent war grave. She has never been moved or drydocked since.

USS Arizona, sunk that same morning across the island, gets a memorial visited by over a million people annually and a name almost everyone recognizes. Utah rests on the quiet northwest shore of Ford Island, an active military installation requiring base access or designated shuttle tours to visit. Both ships still release trapped fuel decades later, yet while Arizona’s sheen is widely photographed and commemorated as "black tears," the quiet decay of Utah draws far less public attention. A small pier memorial honors her lost crew. The vast majority of Pearl Harbor tourists never make the trip out.

Fifty-four men and an infant remain entombed beneath the harbor surface, just minutes away from the most visited naval memorial in America, largely overlooked by history.

Photos:
By U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist John M. Hageman - Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47551698
By U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Daniel A. Barker - Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8182679

𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗣𝗘𝗔𝗥𝗟 𝗛𝗔𝗥𝗕𝗢𝗥 𝗦𝗔𝗜𝗟𝗢𝗥 𝗪𝗛𝗢 𝗜𝗦 𝗙𝗜𝗡𝗔𝗟𝗟𝗬 𝗖𝗢𝗠𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗛𝗢𝗠𝗘

On September 23, 2026, a sailor killed at Pearl Harbor is finally coming home to Indiana.

His name is 𝗙𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗛𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗕𝗼𝘆𝗲𝗿.

He had been gone since December 7, 1941.

Boyer was only 22 years old when he served aboard the battleship USS West Virginia, moored along Battleship Row at Pearl Harbor. That Sunday morning, Japanese aircraft struck the American fleet without warning.

The West Virginia was hit repeatedly by torpedoes and bombs. The battleship suffered catastrophic damage and settled onto the shallow harbor floor. Counter-flooding prevented her from capsizing, but 106 members of her crew were killed.

Fred Boyer was one of them.

𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗨𝗡𝗞𝗡𝗢𝗪𝗡𝗦 𝗢𝗙 𝗨𝗦𝗦 𝗪𝗘𝗦𝗧 𝗩𝗜𝗥𝗚𝗜𝗡𝗜𝗔

As the shattered battleship was salvaged, Navy personnel recovered the remains of men who had died aboard her. They were initially buried at Halawa Naval Cemetery on Oahu.

After the war, the American Graves Registration Service worked to identify them.

Forty-two individuals were identified.

Others could not be.

Those unidentified remains, including Boyer’s, were eventually buried as Unknowns at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, better known as the Punchbowl.

His name survived.

His grave did not.

For decades, his family knew where he had died and what ship he had served aboard, but there was no identified resting place to bring him home from.

𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗥𝗧𝗬-𝗙𝗜𝗩𝗘 𝗨𝗡𝗞𝗡𝗢𝗪𝗡𝗦

In 2017, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency began another attempt.

Working with cemetery officials, DPAA disinterred 35 Unknowns believed to be associated with USS West Virginia and transferred the remains to its laboratory.

This time, investigators had tools the teams of the 1940s could never have imagined.

Modern forensic anthropology, dental comparison, genetic testing and the accumulated historical record could be brought together to answer questions that had remained unresolved for generations.

On June 11, 2024, DPAA identified the remains of 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘀 𝗙𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗛𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗕𝗼𝘆𝗲𝗿.

More than 82 years after Pearl Harbor, the Unknown had his name again.

𝗜𝗡𝗗𝗜𝗔𝗡𝗔 𝗜𝗦 𝗣𝗥𝗘𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗧𝗢 𝗪𝗘𝗟𝗖𝗢𝗠𝗘 𝗛𝗜𝗠

Boyer is scheduled to arrive at Indianapolis International Airport at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, September 23.

From there, the procession is expected to travel north on State Road 19 toward Tipton. Residents have been encouraged to stand along the route as the sailor passes through the community he left so many decades ago.

It is difficult to compress that span of time into a number.

Pearl Harbor happened before most Americans alive today were born.

Parents became grandparents. Children became great-grandparents. Entire generations lived their lives while Fred Boyer remained among the Unknowns.

And now a road through Indiana is being prepared for his return.

𝗕𝗘𝗦𝗜𝗗𝗘 𝗛𝗜𝗦 𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗦

The final chapter is scheduled for September 30.

At Kempton Cemetery, Fred Boyer will be laid to rest with U.S. Navy military honors.

He will be buried beside his parents.

That detail may be the smallest fact in the official record, but it may also be the one that says the most.

A 22-year-old sailor left Indiana before America had entered the war.

He died on one of the most consequential mornings in American history.

His remains crossed from a wrecked battleship to a temporary cemetery, then to an Unknown grave at the Punchbowl, then into a modern forensic laboratory.

Nearly 85 years after Pearl Harbor, the journey ends where journeys like his were always supposed to end.

𝗔𝘁 𝗵𝗼𝗺𝗲.

𝗕𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝗳𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗹𝘆.

𝗪𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗲𝗱.