A U.S. Navy Sailor killed aboard the USS Oklahoma on Dec. 7, 1941, will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery on Thursday.
Radioman Third Class Starring B. Winfield, 22, of San Rafael, California, was assigned to the Oklahoma when the ship was attacked by Japanese aircraft. The battleship sustained multiple torpedo hits, which caused it to quickly capsize.
Winfield was Adam Morrill’s great uncle – his maternal grandmother's younger brother.
“I can't speak for my entire family, but for me, the service represents a long-awaited closure and a permanent memorial to his sacrifice,” he said. “It is unfortunate that his two sisters and his mother never lived to see the day, but they are all at peace now in God's presence.”
Winfield was born in Alameda County in the San Francisco Bay Area on July 1, 1919, to Raymond Robert Winfield and Frances Victoria Olson, Morrill said.
“His father was born on the Hoopa Reservation, although he was not to our knowledge a Native American, an electrician in the shipyards of San Francisco. His mother was a first-generation American born to immigrants from Sweden. He had an older sister, Joyce, and a younger sister, Meryl, who went by `Sunny,’” Morrill said.
According to Morrill, the family was active in the community. Winfield’s father was a Mason and a Sciot, his mother an Eastern Star and Queen of the 4th of July in Albany, CA.
“Their father took them to the outdoors often and Starring learned to love to hunt and fish,” continued Morrill.
Winfield’s father was killed in an industrial accident in the shipyards when he was 7 years old. His mother remarried U. S. Army Lt. Colonel and World War I veteran Henry Robles Sanborn. In the early 1930s, the family moved to Marin County where the children attended and graduated from San Rafael High School.
“Starring was very smart and he skipped two grades and graduated with his older sister in 1936. In high school Starring played football and basketball,” Morrill said.
While in high school Winfield met the love of his life and future wife, Gailene Beth Walker. He attended the College of Marin and worked as a miner. In September of 1940, Winfield enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve in San Francisco. In February 1941 he was promoted and transferred to San Diego for Radio School. In April 1941 he was transferred to the USS Oklahoma and was transported to Pearl Harbor aboard the USS Enterprise.
“In September he managed to obtain leave and returned home and married Gailene in Reno, Nevada on September 23,” said Morrill. “They enjoyed a brief honeymoon before he again reported for duty aboard the USS Oklahoma in Pearl Harbor on September 30, 1941.”
The attack on the Oklahoma resulted in the deaths of 429 crewmen, including that of Winfield. 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 Oklahoma at that time. The AGRS subsequently buried the unidentified remains in 46 plots at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu. In October 1949, a military board classified those who could not be identified as non-recoverable, including Winfield.
Renewed efforts to identify the Unknowns of the USS Oklahoma began in 2003 with the exhumation of one of the 46 graves containing the USS Oklahoma Unknowns. In 2015, DPAA received approval to exhume the rest of the USS Oklahoma Unknowns from the Punchbowl.
To identify Winfield’s remains, scientists used dental, anthropological and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis.
Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.