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Pamela Baker (SBTS Writer)-Historian
to remember
McKeeman, Bert Eugene, F1c.
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Casualty Info
Home Town Council Bluffs, IA
Last Address Council Bluff, IA
Casualty Date Dec 07, 1941
Cause KIA-Body Not Recovered
Reason Other Explosive Device
Location Hawaii
Conflict World War II/Asiatic-Pacific Theater/Attack on Pearl Harbor
Location of Interment Courts of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial - Honolulu, Hawaii
Wall/Plot Coordinates Court 1 (cenotaph)
Official Badges
Unofficial Badges
Additional Information
Last Known Activity:
Fireman/1c Bert McKeeman was Killed in Action on December 7, 1941, during the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was stationed aboard the USS Oklahoma BB37.
Comments/Citation:
Fireman First Class Bert Eugene McKeeman, #3166665
Roy and Mathie Mae McKeeman welcomed their son, Bert Eugene, to their home at 927 Avenue G in Council Bluffs, Iowa on July 23, 1916. The McKeeman couple worked outside their home, a rare partnership in times when women were seldom employed. Roy was a welder in a utility tank factory while Mathie managed a grocery. In the eight years after Bert’s birth, Mathie and Roy had three more children, two sons and a daughter.
During the McKeeman siblings’ formative years, United States’ troops saw combat in World War I. When war ended on November 11, 1918, more than 300,000 American servicemen were casualties, including more than 53,000 killed in action. The horrors of trench warfare and slaughter of young Americans evoked strong isolationism among United States citizens. New terrors were to come.
The country and world experienced immense uncertainties from 1918 to 1940, beginning with the Spanish influenza pandemic that emerged after the war. It is believed that returning GIs brought the Spanish influenza home to the civilian population. The pandemic killed 50 million people worldwide, including 675,000 within the United States. In 1929, the Great Depression created a financial plague that spread across global economies, devastating families, leaving them destitute. Nationally, more than 25% of the workforce was unable to find jobs. When the decade slipped over the horizon, Americans sensed an easing of fiscal pressure. Any relief was short-lived.
Germans’ political unrest fomented after World War I, providing the emerging Nazi party with fodder for its leader, Adolf Hitler. By 1934, he was in control of the country. In 1939, the Wehrmacht swept over Poland, igniting World War II. In less than a year, Hitler dominated Europe. America had little heart for another global war. The majority of the country maintain a staunch isolationist policy, regarding the Nazis as Europe’s problem.
Bert, 23, worked as a laborer with the Works Progress Administration, a Roosevelt New Deal project that employed 8.5 million individuals before being disbanded in 1943. Military service was considered a vitally needed and desired occupation for young men. Its stable wage, work, food and housing were coveted. Like millions of Americans, the McKeemans were well aware of the Nazi’s dictatorial hold on European families and the likely prospect of war. It must have been with misgivings that Roy and Mathie accepted Bert’s enlistment in the United States Navy on July 27, 1940, in Omaha, Nebraska. After completing basic training, Bert was ranked as a Fireman First Class. Stationed aboard the USS Oklahoma (BB-37,) Bert mustered from San Pedro, CA to Pearl Harbor on November 29, 1940.
The battleship was positioned strategically along with other vessels in the Navy’s Pacific Fleet due, in great measure, to Japan's intensifying aggression. For more than a decade, the island nation had engaged in systematic imperialistic overreach, invading its larger neighbors to commandeer natural resources that it lacked, particularly, oil reserves. The Nanjing massacre and other barbaric actions turned world opinion against the Japanese government and its military.
Unfazed, Japan sent a clear message to the world in September 1940 when it signed the Tripartite Pact with Nazi Germany and Italy. Americans had no heart for involvement in another global war and regarded Hitler as a European problem. But Japan’s aggressive actions partnered those of Germany in regard to its desire to become a world power.
During 1941, Japan and the United States maintained an uneasy relationship that devolved into a resigned anticipation of certain conflict. For weeks, U.S. citizens followed daily newspaper reports as negotiations seesawed between the two nations. Neither the American government nor its citizens pinpointed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii as the flashpoint for the next four years’ war.
On December 6, President Roosevelt made a direct appeal to Emperor Hirohito, urging the aversion of war between their two nations. That warm Saturday afternoon, the USS Oklahoma baseball team played a game on Ford Island. Enjoying America’s pastime and the exhilarating camaraderie, the men could not have imagined the life-altering event that was only hours away.
As the country awaited the outcome of the diplomatic petition, massive enemy naval and air forces were gathered in darkness less than 300 miles north of Oahu. Six Japanese carriers, with cruisers and destroyers were positioned to strike the Hawaiian harbor. The carriers held 420 attack aircraft, fueled and loaded with bombs and torpedoes.
The following bright morning, Christmas holidays nearing, a north wind of 10 knots blew over Pearl Harbor. F1C McKeeman was aboard the Oklahoma that was positioned starboard of the USS Maryland. The crew was busy with activities for Sunday’s services, assembled on deck for morning colors. Flying through scattered clouds, planes bearing a red disc festooned with rays of the Rising Sun bore down on the Pacific Fleet and their crews. Aboard those ships, men searched skyward as the din of hundreds of engines resonated closer. It was 0755 hours.
General Quarters! This is not a Drill!
At the onset of the 7 December 1941 attack, the battleship USS Oklahoma (BB-37), was moored at berth Fox 5 on “Battleship Row.” Just before 8 am, the Oklahoma was among the first of the ships struck in the attack, because of her position in the harbor. Nine torpedoes hit the Oklahoma, each on her port side. The torpedoes struck higher on the port side as she capsized. Heroic efforts were made to rescue the trapped men inside the hull. After 3 days, 32 men were rescued. After the Arizona, she was the largest loss of life, at 429 sailors and Marines. The Oklahoma was salvaged in 1942, but it was determined she could not be repaired. In May of 1947, she was sold for scrap and while under tow to California, she sank in a storm. Her exact location remains unknown to this day.
Bert Eugene McLaughlin, 24, killed in action, was among those men who perished during the attack. Listed as missing in action, he was memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing, National Cemetery of the Pacific, Honolulu, Hawaii. Awarded the Purple Heart posthumously, Bert was mourned by his parents and siblings. They placed a cenotaph in his honor at the Edar Lawn Cemetery in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
A Sailor’s Longest Voyage:
Bert’s story did not end on December 7, 1941. His longest voyage carried him into the 21st century, buoyed by advanced investigative analyses that resolved his identity as one of the Oklahoma’s lost crew. Navy Fireman 1st Class Bert E. McKeeman, 25, of Council Bluffs, Iowa, accounted for on August 13, 2018, was buried December 1, 2018 in his hometown 78 years after the USS Oklahoma and its crew were attacked at Pearl Harbor. As the 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor nears, his sacrificial patriotism is recognized and honored.
WASHINGTON, November 13, 2018:
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, accounted for from World War II are being returned to his family for burial with full military honors.
On Dec. 7, 1941, McKeeman was assigned to the battleship USS Oklahoma, which was moored at Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, when the ship was attacked by Japanese aircraft. The USS Oklahoma sustained multipletorpedo hits, which caused it to quickly capsize. The attack on the ship resulted in the deaths of 429 crewmen, including McKeeman.
From December 1941 to June 1944, Navy personnel recovered the remains of the deceased crew, which were subsequently interred in the Halawa and Nu’uanu Cemeteries.
In September 1947, tasked with recovering and identifying fallen U.S. personnel in the Pacific Theater, members of the American Graves Registration Service (AGRS) disinterred the remains of U.S. casualties from the two cemeteries and transferred them to the Central Identification Laboratory at Schofield Barracks.
The laboratory staff was only able to confirm the identifications of 35 men from the USS Oklahoma at that time. The AGRS subsequently buried the unidentified remains in 46 plots at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP), known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu. In October 1949, a military board classified those who could not be identified as non-recoverable, including McKeeman.
In April 2015, the Deputy Secretary of Defense issued a policy memorandum directing the disinterment of unknowns associated with the USS Oklahoma. On June 15, 2015, DPAA personnel began exhuming the remains from the Punchbowl for analysis. To identify McKeeman’s remains, scientists from DPAA and the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial (mtDNA), Y-chromosome (Y-STR) and autosomal (auSTR) DNA analysis, dental and anthropological analysis, as well as circumstantial evidence.
DPAA is grateful to the Department of Veterans Affairs for their partnership in this mission.
This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see www.storiesbehindthestars.org). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen saved on Together We Served and Fold3. Can you help write these stories? Related to this, there will be a smartphone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen serviceperson’s name and read his/her story.
Stories Behind the Stars Contributing Author: Pamela C. Baker
Pamela Baker (SBTS Writer)-Historian
to remember
McKeeman, Bert Eugene, F1c.
