Navy Sailor Louis Tushla Brought Home to Nebraska

By Barney McCoy, Professor, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

July 19, 2021, midnight ·

Friends and relatives of Navy 1st Class sailor Louis Tushla gather outside St. Joseph Catholic Church in Atkinson, Nebraska on July 17, 2021 for a service in his memory. Tushla died aboard the U.S.S. Oklahoma in the December 7, 1941, Japanese Pearl Harbor attack. Tushla's remains were positively identified by scientists from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and Armed Forces Medical Examiner System in late 2020 so they could be returned to his relatives in his hometown of Atkinson. (Photo by Barney McCoy, UNL)

A Navy military honor guard escorts the coffin of 1st Class sailor Louis Tushla to his burial site in Atkinson, Nebraska on July 17, 2021. Tushla died aboard the U.S.S. Oklahoma in the December 7, 1941, Japanese Pearl Harbor attack. (Photo by Barney McCoy, UNL)

Atkinson, Nebraska native Navy 1st Class sailor Louis Tushla died aboard the U.S.S. Oklahoma in the December 7, 1941, Japanese Pearl Harbor attack. He was believed to be in the ship's engine room when it was struck by Japanese torpedoes and sank in a matter of minutes. (Courtesy photo)

Almost 80-years after Navy 1st Class sailor Louis Tushla died in the Japanese Pearl Harbor attack his remains were buried on July 17th, 2021 in his hometown of Atkinson, Nebraska. Tushla's remains were unidentified until September 2020 when scientists at Offutt Air Force Base’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency lab helped confirm his identity with DNA testing and forensic anthropological analysis. (Photo by Barney McCoy, UNL)

Gerard Keating with son Eric at Louis Tushla's military burial in Atkinson, Nebraska July 17, 2021. Keating, a second cousin of Tushla's, was one of the organizers who helped arrange for the Navy 1st Class sailor's return home for burial almost 80 years after Tushla died in Japan's 1941 bombing attack on Pearl Harbor. (Photo by Barney McCoy, University of Nebraska-Lincoln)

Crowds of people and vehicles outside the church and site of the Tushla Mass in Atkinson.

Tushla Navy Honor Guard standing behind the casket.

Louis Tushla in his sailor uniform standing next to an automobile.

Louis Tushla grave with a small American flag next to it in Atkinson, Nebraska

Gerard Keating at Tushla burial with American flags in the background

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The community of Atkinson, Nebraska came together Saturday to honor one of its own who died defending his country 80 years ago.

Navy 1st class sailor Louis Tushla was 25 years old when he died aboard the U.S.S. Oklahoma during the 1941 Japanese Pearl Harbor attack. Late last week, he returned home to Atkinson with a State Patrol and American Legion motorcycle escort from Offutt Air Force Base.

“People everywhere. Just people,” said Ken Stenka, Holt County’s Veteran’s Service Officer. “Police departments blocking traffic, people standing along the roadsides and there would be farmers standing out in the middle of nowhere with a flag, you know.”

Tushla’s remains were unidentified until last September when scientists at Offutt’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency lab helped confirm his identity with DNA testing and forensic anthropological analysis.

Lara Tushla Presented with flag that draped Louis coffin — Lara Tushla, a second cousin of Navy 1st Class sailor Louis Tushla is presented with the American flag that draped the sailor's coffin during his military burial in Atkinson, Nebraska on July 17, 2021. Lara Tushla's father provided the DNA sample that helped scientists from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and Armed Forces Medical Examiner System confirm the identity of Louis Tushla's remains 78-years after his death on the U.S.S. Oklahoma. (Photo by Barney McCoy, UNL)

“Awe inspiring,” Lara Tushla said. Her father provided the DNA match and told her how her great grandmother always believed her son Louis would someday come home.

“And there were cards and the things the family has that she held on to hope again, hope that he would come home and he has come home now,” Tushla said.

“I heard about Pearl Harbor and I’ve read the stories,” said Sarah Sell, a third cousin. “And to try to put that together, that this guy died there and that now we finally get to bring him home. It’s hard to put together that it’s real.”

Lara McCormick DPAA Forensic Anthropoogist.JPG — DPAA forensic anthropologist Lara McCormick sits at her office desk at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha. McCormick's office wall holds photos of the Navy sailors and Marines whose previously unidentified remains she and other DPAA lab scientists have helped identify decades after their deaths in the 1941 Japanese attack on Hawaii's Pearl Harbor. (Photo by Barney McCoy, UNL)

DPAA scientist Lara McCormick helped confirm Tushla’s identity and went to Atkinson to meet his family.

“It makes me really happy to know that they haven’t been forgotten,” McCormick said. “We don’t get to meet with the family members very often but it’s comforting to know they’re not forgotten, they’re not…they’re still missed.”

Navy Seaman Tushla was buried with full military honors on Saturday. A requiem Mass was also led by Monsignor James Gilg, another Tushla cousin, who paid holy tribute to the sailor who died three generations ago.

”In the spiritual realm of course time is not relevant,” he said. “We are celebrating him and his sacrifice of his life for others. We are celebrating a moment that he’s experiencing great joy now.”

Today, Louis Tushla rests in a quiet cemetery on Atkinson’s west side. His return symbolic, said cousin Gerard Keating, of the extraordinary lengths America makes to bring every service member back home.

“Back to freedom. That’s what makes our country so special. We live for it. We fight for it. Some die for it,” Keating said.

Navy Sailor Louis Tushla Brought Home to Nebraska

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