The remains of a Kossuth County sailor who died at the start of World War Two are finally coming home.

Fireman 1st Class William H. Kennedy was killed aboard the USS Oklahoma during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 but his remains were not properly identified until earlier this year.

Kennedy’s remains will now be brought back to Iowa this week for proper burial as planeside honors will be conducted on the tarmac of the Des Moines International Airport Thursday with the funeral in his hometown of Titonka on Friday.

Kennedy was identified by Department of Defense program started in 2015 to use DNA analysis to identify remains from the Oklahoma.

(By Brian Wilson, KLGA, Algona)