One of Mary Chin’s most prized possessions is an inexpensive ring and a delicate handkerchief.
Both were passed down to the 67-year-old West Dundee woman by her mother Frances, when Chin was just 12 years old.
These two items — the ring features a picture of a palm tree; the word “Hawaii” is stitched on the handkerchief — made an impact on the young girl at the time because they had been gifts from her mother’s cousin, U.S. Navy Petty Officer Second Classs Walter Howard Backman, when he was stationed at Pearl Harbor.
Because Backman was one of approximately 390 sailors aboard the USS Oklahoma whose remains were never identified after the surprise Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941, the 22-year-old sailor never made it home.
Until now.
On Memorial Day, May 28, those remains will be buried at River Hills Memorial Park in Batavia, in the same cemetery that is the final resting place for his parents, August and Beatrice Backman.
The service will be a big deal.
For years, Walter Backman’s remains were among the hundreds of bodies that had been commingled, buried in a mass gave at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu in a plot marked as “the unknowns of the USS Oklahoma.”
Then, in 2015, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency partnered with the Department of Veterans Affairs to exhume all unknown remains from the USS Oklahoma and, by using DNA from family members, begin the lengthy anthropological inventory of the 13,000 skeletal elements.
Last August, the Backman family was notified his remains had been identified, and in November his niece and nephew met with Navy officials to begin planning his burial service.
The family could have chosen the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (The Punchbowl) in Hawaii, where the anonymous remains had been buried for over 60 years, said Carolyn Sellers, the daughter of Walter’s younger sister Charlene. Or they could have had their uncle interred in Arlington National Cemetery. Instead, the Batavia cemetery was chosen to make it more convenient for surviving relatives to visit, and because he will lie near his parents.
About 15 family members from seven states, said Sellers, will be attending the Memorial Day ceremony. And the public is invited to join them. The service will start with a short prayer service at 1 p.m. at Healy Chapel, 332 W. Downer Place in Aurora, followed by a memorial procession that will head west on Downer Place, then north on Highland Avenue, then east on Sullivan Road and finally north on Illinois Route 25 to River Hills.
The procession should take about 30 minutes, arriving at River Hills around 2 p.m.
Related: After 76 years, Aurora sailor killed at Pearl Harbor finally coming home “
According to Jacob Zimmerman, superintendent of Kane County’s Veterans Assistance Commission, the U.S. Navy will conduct the memorial service with Rear Admiral Carol Lynch presiding, and will include a seven-member honor detail.
Parking will be available at the cemetery, and overflow has been arranged with the Batavia VFW Post, located just north of River Hills, with a shuttle bus providing transportation from 1 to 4 p.m. to and from the cemetery.
Those attending, he noted, are encouraged to arrive early to pay tribute to this local Purple Heart recipient.
According to documents and family sources, Walter Backman was born in 1919 in Wilton, North Dakota, but his family lost their farm during the Depression, and moved to Aurora shortly after 19-year-old Walter enlisted in the Navy.
After Backman’s parents moved, Walter, who only had an eighth-grade education because he worked, sometimes in the coal mines with his father to help support the family, stayed behind in North Dakota with his aunt and uncle, Chin’s maternal grandparents.
Because of this arrangment, her mother and Walter “were more like brother and sister than cousins,” said Chin. And Frances corresponded with him regularly when he was stationed in Hawaii. In addition to the ring and handkerchief, Walter even sent his cousin a sailor outfit that she proudly modeled in a photo Chin still remembers.
Walter had spent time with his family here in the Fox Valley before shipping out on the USS Oklahoma from Great Lakes Naval Base in Chicago, according to Sellers, his niece. And he served all three years as a radioman aboard the ship, which had been moored at Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, one day short of a year when it was hit by Japanese torpedoes on Dec. 7, 1941.
The ship quickly capsized, killing 429 crewmen on board. But the Backman family heard nothing about Walter’s fate because the telegram about his death had been mistakenly sent to North Dakota.
And so for weeks they desperately awaited news. Chin, who moved to the Fox Valley from North Dakota when she married in the mid-1970s, said her mother never spoke much about her beloved cousin’s death. But Charlene, Walter’s younger sister, described to her the moment they finally got the news as “horrible.”
“She remembers she was sitting at her desk doing homework,” said Chin, “…and her father’s hair instantly turned white.”
Sellers, who is Charlene’s daughter, says her mother and Walter’s other sister Mildred, left Aurora after his death and moved to San Diego to be part of the war effort. She worked in a factory that made plane parts and met Virgil Lee Pickens, her future husband there, but refused to marry him until he came home from the war. After losing a brother, noted Sellers, Charlene did not want to have to go through that kind of pain again.
Like other family, Seller says her mother, who returned to Aurora after the war, never spoke much about Walter. But there was always a photo of him displayed prominently in their home, along with a picture of the battleship. It was also her mom, who died in 2015, who provided the DNA swab in 2009 that allowed the Navy to identify Walter’s remains.
“It was always emotional for her,” said Sellers.
Both she and Chin say Walter’s death made the entire family much more patriotic; certainly more aware of the sacrifices of those who served. Receiving that ring and handerchief, added Chin, “was just so personal, so special.”
And, they added, so will this upcoming Memorial Day, when a young sailor finally gets the welcome home he deserves.
Twitter @dencrosby
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