Deep in the veterans’ section of Mountain View Memorial Park in Lakewood is a grave marker for Ralph H. Keil. “In memory of our beloved son,” it reads, along with the dates of his birth and death: Dec. 7, 1941.
Beneath the neatly trimmed grass and flapping U.S. flag, there is no casket or urn.
Keil grew up in Tacoma, joined the Navy and died at the age of 20 on a sinking battleship in a war that had started just minutes before.
His parents thought he was lost forever when they had the marker installed a few feet from their own reserved grave site.
On Sept. 11, Keil will finally return home. With family present, he will be buried in the Tahoma National Cemetery in Kent.
“I think it’s going to be a tremendous relief,” his cousin, Kathie Keil Crozier, told The News Tribune. “I hope it will be a feeling of great satisfaction.”
Attack on Pearl Harbor
Along with 428 other Navy personnel on the USS Oklahoma, Seaman 1st Class Kiel died as the docked ship took some of the first hits in the attack that brought the United States into World War II. The battleship capsized and sank to the bottom of Pearl Harbor within minutes after being struck by Japanese torpedoes.
It took the Navy a year to salvage the ship and remove the remains of 390 sailors and marines inside. By then, the bodies were unidentifiable and co-mingled. In 1944, the Navy placed the remains in 52 coffins and buried them in a military cemetery in Honolulu.
Prairie Home
Keil was born in Prairie Home, Missouri, on Aug. 30, 1921. He was the only child of Cornelius Theodore Keil and Lutetia Nadine Smith. When their son was 1- or 2-years-old, the family moved to Tacoma, according to Crozier.
The family lived near relatives on South Prospect Street in Tacoma. In addition to Gray Middle School, Keil attended Lincoln and Puyallup high schools.
Sometime before Keil’s senior year, his family moved to Shine. The small unincorporated community in Jefferson County is near the northern terminus of the Hood Canal Bridge.
Keil was a natural athlete, according to Crozier, and became something of a football star at Chimacum High School.
Miltary man
Keil wanted to be a naval aviator, Crozier said. He took flying lessons while in high school.
“Ralph and his best friend, Earl (Kimmons), went down and enlisted, so he never graduated,” Crozier said.
Keil enlisted in the Navy on March 12, 1940. After naval basic training in San Diego, Keil and Kimmons were both assigned to the Oklahoma. According to the Navy, Keil stood watches as lookout, telephone talker and messenger and was a member of a gun crew.
He was looking forward to a leave scheduled for Christmas 1941. He planned to see his family, friends and his girlfriend, Ginny.
Attack
Keil and Kimmons were both on the Oklahoma the morning of Dec. 7, 1941. Kimmons survived the attack.
“He told the story that when they were running to escape the ship, Ralph was right behind him,” Crozier said. “Earl got out and obviously Ralph did not.”
Confusion reigned in the weeks that followed. Families of the missing were told little. In January 1942, Keil’s father, Cornelius, wrote a letter to the Navy. It was recently returned to the family.
“Dear sir,” it reads. “I received a telegram from you, December 21, 1941 notifying me that my son, Ralph Henry Keil, first class seaman USS Oklahoma was missing following an attack at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
“Up until now, I have received no further word. I would like to know if he has been located and safe, or if he has been wounded. I would sure like to know. Will you please give me further information as to his safety, or if he has been stationed on another ship?”
When it became clear that Keil had died on the Oklahoma, both Ginny and his mother expressed interest in traveling to Hawaii to retrieve Keil’s remains.
“Ginny was going to go there and find him and bring him home,” Crozier said. “Of course, they didn’t understand what this really meant, what really happened to him.”
Keil was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart Medal, Combat Action Ribbon and other medals.
Ralph’s legacy
Crozier, 79, grew up in Tacoma. She now lives in Shoreline.
Unlike some families who wall off mentions of the loved ones they lost in conflicts, Keil was always a presence in her extended family, she said in a phone interview with The News Tribune this week. He was often spoken about.
Crozier has become the family historian following the deaths of older relatives. She is the point of contact the Navy has been using to arrange the return of Keil’s remains and arrange his military burial.
Identified
Without a body to bury, Keil’s parents wanted a way to commemorate him, Crozier said. They had the cenotaph placed over where they are now buried.
“At that time, there was no evidence of his life anywhere,” she said. “There was no grave, there was no marker. So this was as close as they could get to a burial place.”
Within a few months of Keil’s death, Ginny married another man and had a child, according to Crozier. The marriage didn’t last, she said, and she later married Kimmons, Keil’s best friend.
Keil’s father died in 1964 and his mother in 1979.
In 2003, a single casket thought to hold the remains of five individuals from the Oklahoma was disinterred from the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii. DNA testing showed it actually contained remains from more than 100 people.
In 2015, the Oklahoma Project, part of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) ramped up and disinterred the rest of the remains to begin identification.
In February 2019, DPAA announced that Keil’s remains had been identified and accounted for, using mitochondrial DNA provided by a relative of Keil’s mother.
For Crozier, it’s the end of a story she’s long lived with.
“This is something that’s been on my radar screen my entire life, in one way or another, and I’m not sure it’s completely sunk in yet,” Crozier said. “I guess that’d be a great question to ask myself on Sept. 12.”
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