Maryland soldier Owen Norris identified, brought home after Pearl Harbor’s West Loch Disaster
By Julian Nazario
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LINTHCUM, Maryland (WBAL) — Marriottsville-native Owen Norris was among the service members killed during a 1944 accidental explosion of a tank ship at Pearl Harbor, an event known as the West Loch Disaster.
On Thursday, he came home.
A dignified transfer ceremony was held at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport for U.S. Army PFC Owen Norris, who was killed during World War II.
Several family members, including a nephew who works for a ground-handling company at the airport, attended the ceremony.
The West Loch Disaster killed 132 Navy, Army and Marine Corps personnel. Army personnel who died from the explosion were initially buried at Halawa Naval Cemetery, but in 1947, their bodies were exhumed in an attempt to identify those buried.
In November, a second mass exhumation was approved after DNA technology successfully identified one West Loch Unknown.
According to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, scientists used dental, anthropological, stable isotope analysis and circumstantial evidence to identify Norris’ remains.
The agency said a rosette will be placed next to his name on the American Battle Monuments Commission’s Courts of the Missing in Honolulu to indicate he has been identified.
Norris will be buried at West Liberty United Methodist Church Cemetery on Saturday.
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