Class Hillman News Today

A Holyoke, Mass., sailor who served on the USS California at Pearl Harbor will be buried Saturday, with flags across the state ordered to be raise to half-staff, Gov. Maura Healey announced.

It was a dozen years ago that the Navy asked for DNA samples from surviving relatives of WWII veteran Merle Hillman who was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He had been one of 25 unknowns from the battleship USS California interred at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii.