Stow New York

John H. Mann, age 22, from Chautauqua County Stow, New York .

Parents: Emma Mann

Service era: World War II

Date of death: Sunday, December 7, 1941
Death details: On December 19, 2024, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of Staff Sgt. John Henry Mann missing from World War II. Mann entered the U.S. Army Air Forces from New York and served in the 22nd Material Squadron, 17th Air Base Group. On December 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 the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor was Japan’s primary target, enemy planes also had orders to attack the airfields on Oahu. Located next to Pearl Harbor, Hickam Field was in the direct path of Japanese planes. Japanese dive bombers and fighters attacked Hickam Field, destroying planes there. They then turned on the base facilities. The Japanese destroyed the Hawaiian Air Depot’s engineering building and hangers at Hickam Field, attempted to take out the underground fuel tanks, and attacked the barracks. Fighter planes also made strafing attacks on personnel caught out in the open. In the meantime, the men at Hickam cobbled together a makeshift ground defense: men broke into weapons lockers and retrieved machine guns and Springfield rifles and began firing at low-flying planes. Some climbed into planes and began firing their machine guns from the ground. Others tried to get planes into the air but by then though, the attack was over. Ninety-one men died at Hickam Field that day. Mann was killed during the attack on Hickam Field, but the exact circumstances of his loss are unknown, and his remains could not be identified at the time. Unidentified remains of personnel killed during the attack were eventually buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP). In 2020, DPAA personnel, in cooperation with cemetery officials, exhumed unknown remains believed to be associated with Hickam Field losses from the NMCP and transferred the remains to the DPAA Laboratory for further study. The laboratory analysis and the totality of the circumstantial evidence available allowed the identification of Mann from among those remains.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Buffalo News (1941)