It took 80 years, but a Bay Area family has closure.

SAN LEANDRO, CA — The remains of a San Leandro sailor killed in the attacks on Pearl Harbor have finally been identified.

Wilbur Newton, a first class Navy seaman, was aboard the USS Oklahoma on Dec. 7, 1941, when Japanese aircraft attacked the battleship, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said in a news release Tuesday.

Around 8 a.m. that day, multiple torpedoes blasted the battleship, which was one of the first ships attacked as it was moored at Ford Island, Pearl Harbor. Newton was trapped below the Oklahoma’s decks and died with 429 shipmates when the ship capsized,

From December 1941 to June 1944, the Navy recovered the remains of the crew, which were interred in the Halawa and Nu’uanu Cemeteries.

The American Graves Registration Service was later charged with identifying the remains of fallen soldiers in the Pacific Theater. In 1947, the service disinterred remains from the two cemeteries and moved them to a laboratory at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii.

Laboratory workers confirmed just 35 identifications from the USS Oklahoma at the time, and the service buried the unidentified remains across 46 plots at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

In 1949, a military board deemed those who could not be identified as non-recoverable, including Newton.

More than 65 years later, personnel with the accounting agency exhumed the unknown remains from the USS Oklahoma to be analyzed. Scientists used dental and anthropological analysis to identify Newton’s remains, as well as mitochondrial DNA. He was identified Oct. 12, 2021.

Newton’s name has been recorded on the Courts of the Missing at the cemetery, along with others who were missing from WWII. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been identified.

Wilbur Newton was the son of E.H. and Leona Newton. They lived in Mound City, Missouri, and formerly Polk County, Nebraska, news outlets reported at the time. His family learned he was missing at the time by telegram from the Navy.

He will be buried May 28 in Mound City.

Born Sept. 23, 1912, and raised in Missouri, Newton was one of six children.

His father was a lucrative photographer, running his own studio in the 1930s and 1940s at a time when photography was increasingly sought after and recognized as an emerging art form.

Wilbur Newton enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1940 at the age of 17 after the Great Depression took its toll.

He earned commendations including a Purple Heart, combat action ribbon, World War II victory medal and American campaign medal.