The remains of Ralph Keil, a Chimacum High School football player who died on the USS Oklahoma during the bombing of Pearl Harbor, will finally be laid to rest at the Tahoma National Cemetary after remaining unidentified for 78 years.
Keil, a 20-year-old seaman first class, was likely asleep on the Oklahoma when Japanese aircraft struck it with three aerial torpedoes at about 7:55 a.m. on Dec. 7, 1941.
The ship began capsizing and was then struck by six more torpedoes, according to an article submitted to the Times-Gazette of Ohio from the Navy Office of Community Outreach. Within 15 minutes, the ship’s port side was torn open, and the ship rolled over completely.
Many of the crew, including Keil, were trapped below the decks. Men on the inside banged on the ship’s bulkhead, trying to get the attention of passing boats. Over the next two days, holes were cut in the bottom of the exposed ship, and 32 men were pulled out alive.
Banging continued to be heard throughout Dec. 10, but the sound was coming from below the water line, and nothing could be done. Eventually, the banging stopped. Keil was never rescued.
Over the next three years, Navy personnel recovered the remains and interred them at the Halawa and Nu’uana cemeteries in Hawaii, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.
In September 1947, members of Mortuary Affairs disinterred and tried to identify the remains of the 429 crewmen who died. Only 35 were identified. Keil was not one of them. The remains of the other 394 men, including Keil, were buried in 46 plots at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
“His parents never got over his death,” said Katie Crozier, Keil’s first cousin, once removed. “His mother was never sure he was dead because they could never prove it.”
After his death, a memorial marker was placed across his parents’ side-by-side grave at Mountain View Memorial Park in Lakewood, per his mother’s request.
Keil, who was an only child, was born in Prairie Home, Mo., on Aug. 30, 1921. A year later, his family moved to Tacoma. While in grade school there, Keil met and started dating his girlfriend, Ginny Grimm. “As far as I know, his entire life, she was his girl,” Crozier said.
In 1939, right before Keil’s senior year, his family moved to Shine in Jefferson County. Keil attended Chimacum High. He took up football for the first time and became a starter for the Cowboys, newspaper accounts from 1939 say.
Keil, who was 5-foot-8 and 145 pounds his senior year, also was on the decorations committee for the annual ball, had a private pilot’s license and was taking pre-college courses with the goal of becoming an aviator, the articles say. “He was a young man who had goals and ambitions,” Crozier said.
In 1940, before he graduated, Keil and his best friend Earl went to Seattle and enlisted in the Navy. Crozier said no one knows why they did that. “Lots of questions remain,” she said. “Maybe we’ll find answers, maybe we won’t.”
A year later, Keil died. He was 20 years, three months and seven days old. Crozier said she’s been told that Keil’s girlfriend “never did get over him.” One of Grimm’s grandchildren is now named Keil, Crozier said.
After Keil’s death, family members worked to reconstruct the narrative of his life. “I’ve been chasing this story my whole life, and others were before me,” Crozier said. “I’ve inherited it.”
Crozier, 79, was born three years after Keil died. One thing she’s learned from working with elderly people is the worry that no one will remember them or their story. “This one last time, I want him to be known, and noticed and remembered,” Crozier said.
For more than 70 years, no one had updates on Keil’s remains. But in 2015, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency began exhuming and attempting to identify the remains of the USS Oklahoma crew members using mitochondrial DNA and autosomal DNA analysis.
In 2019, Crozier, Keil’s official next of kin, was notified that his remains had been identified. He was to be buried at Tahoma National Cemetery in Kent on Sept. 11. A few days before his burial, Crozier said Keil’s remains were to be flown into Washington for a repatriation ceremony in which the casket will be removed from the plane by an Honor Guard and placed into a hearse.
After Keil died, Crozier said his parents often said they were going to go Hawaii to find his body and bring him home. “Well, we’re bringing him home,” she said. “It’s as close as I could come to bringing him back to us, and most importantly, to them.”
