Photo courtesy of DPAA-mills.com

MIAMI – The family of a Black soldier killed in the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 finally had his remains buried in his native North Carolina.

According to NBC News, on April 3, Navy Mess Attendant 3rd Class Neil Frye received full military honors as his remains were brought home and buried at Sandhills State Veterans Cemetery in Spring Lake, North Carolina.

He was buried on the day he would’ve turned 104 years old.

His youngest sister, Mary Frye, 87, the last surviving sibling out of nine, and many descendants attended the burial ceremony along with military soldiers.

Frye, who was 20 years old at the time, was among 2,000 Americans killed during the Pearl Harbor attack in Hawaii when Japan dropped a series of bombs on the USS West Virginia.

As a result, the United States got involved in World War II and in retaliation, dropped atomic bombs on Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing tens of thousands of people and bringing an end to the war.

Neil Frye, who enlisted after another brother had joined the military, worked in the Messman Branch, a racially segregated part of the U.S. Navy that oversaw feeding and assisting the other officers.

The branch was almost entirely Black.

For years, Frye’s family have been searching for his remains and in 2014 were successful while working with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA).

They discovered his remains were buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu along with unknown crewmen who also perished on the USS West Virginia.

Those bodies were exhumed and sent to a DPPA laboratory in Hawaii for analysis and DNA testing.

After 10 years, the testing identified the remains of Frye.