Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, Dec. 7

Iron Range sailor’s remains identified

The attack commenced at 7:48 a.m. Hawaiian Time on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941. The Pearl Harbor naval base was attacked by 353 Imperial Japanese aircraft (including fighters, level and dive bombers, and torpedo bombers) in two waves, launched from six aircraft carriers. All eight U.S. Navy battleships were damaged, with four sunk. All but the USS Arizona were later raised, and six were returned to service and went on to fight in the war. The Japanese also sank or damaged three cruisers, three destroyers, an anti-aircraft training ship and one minelayer. 188 U.S. aircraft were destroyed; 2,403 Americans were killed and 1,178 others were wounded. Important base installations such as the power station, dry dock, shipyard, maintenance, and fuel and torpedo storage facilities, as well as the submarine piers and headquarters building (also home of the intelligence section) were not attacked. Japanese losses were light: 29 aircraft and five midget submarines lost, and 64 servicemen killed. One Japanese sailor, Kazuo Sakamaki, was captured.
Japan announced a declaration of war on the United States later that day (Dec. 8 in Tokyo), but the declaration was not delivered until the following day. The following day, Dec. 8, Congress declared war on Japan. On Dec. 11, Germany and Italy each declared war on the U.S., which responded with a declaration of war against Germany and Italy.
The war effected everyone, including those on the Iron Range.
Dante S. Tini is the latest Minnesota World War II sailor whose remains have been identified after being listed for decades as missing in action and presumed dead after the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
Tini’s remains arrived in Virginia on May 24, where his hometown gathered to honor and bury him.
Tini was 19 years old and serving aboard the USS Oklahoma when the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, prompting the U.S. to declare war on Japan. It was supposed to be Tini’s day off, but the radioman agreed to take another man’s shift the day torpedoes sank the Oklahoma. Some men escaped by jumping into the harbor’s water — much of it covered in oil and on fire — while others climbed across mooring lines and onto the nearby USS Maryland.
Tini, however, was among the 429 crewmen who went down with the ship. Only about 35 were immediately identified, said Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Jeff Grand. Tini was not among them.
The son of Italian immigrants, Tini, who played the accordion, enlisted in the Navy after he graduated high school, reporting to duty on the Oklahoma in October 1940.
“He thought he was going to get to see the world, go to school and learn a lot more,” Barb Maki, Tini’s neice said. “But that never happened.”
As Radioman 3rd Class Tini prepared to go on leave in December 1941, he sent his rhinestone-studded accordion and a few other belongings back to Minnesota. But three days before Tini would have been on a plane home, the Japanese attacked.
In 2012, a Navy officer called Maki asking that Tini’s relatives submit DNA in hopes that it could be used to help identify the remains disinterred in an effort to identify those buried as unknown. The Navy warned Tini’s family that it could take years before an identification was made — if ever.
Then came a call last year — Tini’s remains had been identified. He’d finally be coming home.
Over the past four years, DNA has helped identify the remains of 200 of those who served on the Oklahoma. Seven Minnesota men, including Tini, are among the missing who’ve been identified. Next month, the remains of another Oklahoma sailor, Edward Shelden, 29, of Indianapolis, will be buried at Fort Snelling alongside two other crewmen whose remains were recently identified.
The remains of three Oklahoma crewmen from Minnesota have yet to be identified.