Navy officer from Selma killed at Pearl Harbor accounted for after 79 years

A Navy officer from Selma was accounted for 79 years after he was killed at the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. 

According to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), Navy Chief Carpenter’s Mate Tedd M. Furr, 39, of Selma was accounted for on Nov. 20 in 2020. 

He was serving on the battleship USS Oklahoma on the day of the attack. It was capsized after being hit multiple times by torpedoes. Furr was among 429 crewmen to be killed. 

Following the attack and until 1944 Navy personnel found the remains of the crew and interred them in the Halawa and Nu’uanu Cemeteries.

In 1947 the American Graves Registration Service disinterred the remains at the cemeteries in an effort to recover and identify them. This resulted in a decades-long process as a laboratory could only identify a smaller portion of them at the time. 

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The rest were buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP), also known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu. Furr was among those classified as as non-recoverable. 

In 2015 DPAA exhumed the remains and began making identifications through dental and anthropological analysis, as well as genetic analysis from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System. Over the next several years scientists were able to identify Furr, leading to him being accounted for in 2020. 

"Furr’s name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at the Punchbowl, along with the others who are missing from WWII," said the DPAA's announcement. "A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for." 

He will be buried on April 2, 2025, in the Punchbowl, the announcement says.