PORTLAND, Ore. - Two-thirds of a century ago, Kathleen Wyman drove her brother to California to join the Navy. From there, he shipped out to the USS Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor.

He never came home.

Ensign Eldon Wyman was 24 when he died in the Japanese attack of Dec. 7, 1941. Along with hundreds of others, he was buried in mass graves, officially listed as unknowns.

But Thursday, the Pentagon announced that the remains of Eldon Wyman and two other sailors had been identified, and their remains would be returned to their families.

"I'm very grateful that there's been such persistence in following up on this," Kathleen Wyman said in an interview.

She's known about the identification for a few weeks, and she's known about the possibility of an identification for about four years. She plans to put her brother's ashes in a niche next to their father and mother.

The attack on the Oklahoma left 429 sailors and Marines dead. Following the attack, 36 of these servicemen were identified and the remaining 393 were buried as unknowns in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The focus on Pearl Harbor remains has intensified in recent years through the research of one of the few survivors from the Oklahoma, Ray Emory.