Libolt, Lester H.
Army Corporal

Lester H. Libolt, age 21, from Rock County Nebraska.

Service era: World War II

Date of death: Sunday, December 7, 1941
Death details: On June 11, 2025, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency identified the remains of U.S. Army Air Forces Cpl. Lester H. Libolt, missing from World War II. Libolt entered the U.S. Army Air Forces from Nebraska and served in the 431st Bombardment Squadron, 11th Bombardment Group at Hickam Airfield on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, during World War II. On Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese military forces conducted a surprise attack on U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, as well as surrounding U.S. military installations, including Hickam Field and Schofield Army Barracks. While U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor was Japan’s primary target, enemy planes also had orders to attack the airfields on Oahu. Japanese dive bombers and fighters attacked Hickam Field, then turned on the base facilities, destroying the Hawaiian Air Depot’s engineering building and hangers, attempting to take out the underground fuel tanks, and attacking the barracks. Fighter planes also made strafing attacks on personnel caught out in the open. The attack lasted four hours, and 91 men died at Hickam Field that day, including Libolt. In the days following the attack, Navy personnel recovered the remains of U.S. Army and U.S. Army Air Forces casualties, which were subsequently interred in the Schofield Barracks Cemetery. In August 1947, tasked with recovering and identifying fallen U.S. personnel from World War II, members of the American Graves Registration Service disinterred the remains of U.S. casualties from the Schofield Cemetery and transferred them to the Central Identification Laboratory at Schofield Barracks. The laboratory staff was unable to confirm the identifications of 12 men from the Hickam Field attack at that time, and the unidentified remains were subsequently buried as Unknowns in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu. In June 2019, DPAA personnel began exhuming the 12 Schofield Barracks Unknowns from the Punchbowl for analysis, including one set of remains disinterred in 2020, which was transferred to a DPAA Laboratory for further study. There, based on the laboratory analysis, and total circumstantial evidence, the remains were identified as those of Libolt.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Lincoln Evening Journal (1945)