12.20.05
Navy Seaman Missing from Pearl Harbor Attack is Identified

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO)
announced today that the remains of a U.S. Navy seaman missing in action from
the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor have been identified and will soon be
returned to his family for burial with full military honors.

He is Seaman 2nd Class Warren P. Hickok of Kalamazoo, Mich. The
family has not set a date for his burial.

Hickok was assigned to the Light Mine Layer the USS Sicard when
the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Many crewmembers from the USS Sicard,
including Hickok, were dispatched to assist the crew of the USS Cummings, a
destroyer docked nearby. The Cummings succeeded in getting underway and
clearing Pearl Harbor with no casualties reported. However, an investigation
into those still unaccounted-for after the attack surmised that Hickok may
have been a casualty aboard the battleship, the USS Pennsylvania, since some
crewmen from the USS Sicard had been dispatched to the USS Pennsylvania during
the attack. But records indicate that Hickok was not lost aboard that ship.

In the days following the attack, burial details interred many of
the unknown dead in Nuuanu Cemetery on Oahu. Among those buried were an
unknown sailor identified only as X-2. Following the war, the Army Graves
Registration Service oversaw the disinterment of unknown remains, including
the X-2 remains. They could not be identified and were reburied in Section E,
Grave 73 at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, known as the
Punchbowl, on June 9, 1949.

In 2004, an avocational historian contacted the Joint POW/MIA
Accounting Command (JPAC) in Hawaii and suggested that the remains in Grave
731 may be those of Hickok. Based on available records, JPAC exhumed the
grave in June 2005. Forensic anthropologists at JPAC were able to match those
remains, including dental remains, with detailed information found in Hickok's
World War II medical and dental records.

Of the 88,000 unaccounted-for Americans from all conflicts,
78,000 are from World War II. For additional information on the Defense
Department's mission to account for missing Americans, visit the DPMO Web site
at http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo or call (703) 699-1169.