Neil Frye joined the US Navy in 1940 at age 20 before he was killed during the attacks on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
After more than 80 years, a Black soldier killed during the attack on Pearl Harbor was finally laid to rest last week in his native North Carolina.
On Thursday, April 3, Navy Mess Attendant 3rd Class Neil Frye received full military honors as his remains were welcomed home and buried at Sandhills State Veterans Cemetery in Spring Lake, North Carolina, NBC News reported. Thursday also happened to be the late veteran’s 104th birthday.
The emotional burial was attended by many of his descendants and his only surviving sibling out of nine, his youngest sister, 87-year-old Mary Frye McCrimmon. His sister, who was three years old when he enlisted, told WHRO public radio how their family never gave up hope they would reconnect with him.
“My mom used to say she loved to people-watch,” she said. “She would go anywhere she could get a chance to go, just watched all the men go by to see if she could see Neil.”
According to ABC 11, 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.
“That time, they couldn’t get no jobs. They had – well, I’m just going to say racial thing,” Frye McCrimmon explained to WHRO. “They didn’t get no job. So they went where they could get paid, but that was such a little amount that they got.”
Frye was one of 2,000 Americans killed when Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941, while he was on board the USS West Virginia. The bombing became the impetus for the United States to enter World War II. His sister said his parents learned of his death when a postmaster delivered the news to them.
Up until recently, Frye’s remains were in Honolulu, buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also known as the Punchbowl, with the other remains of unknown crewmen from the USS West Virginia.
According to WHRO Frye McCrimmon and her family began working with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) in 2014 to locate her brother’s remains. Meanwhile, in 2017, the 35 remaining unidentified remains from the USS West Virginia were exhumed and sent to the DPAA laboratory in Hawaii for analysis. From there scientists used dental and anthropological analysis with other circumstantial evidence to identify the remains. The Armed Forces Medical Examiner System also utilized Mitochondrial DNA analysis.
After 10 years, the DPAA announced in December that Frye had been accounted for on Sept. 27.
Frye’s niece, Carol Frye-Davis told ABC 11 that his memory was kept alive through his siblings over the years and that welcoming him home finally has “been an emotional, but a beautiful experience.”
She added, “He had his life ahead of him, and he was cut down at 20, but he did it for this country.”
His return and the honor he has received is also poignant as it comes at a time when the Trump administration’s anti-DEI efforts have been requiring the military to remove mention of integral Black figures from military websites.
While Frye’s parents and many of the people who knew him have long since died themselves, Fyre McCrimmon said, “I know my mom and dad, there’s any kind of way they know about this, I know they’re some kind of happy.”
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