MASSILLON, Ohio (WJW) – The city of Massillon has a long, proud history of sending its sons and daughters to serve the country, and those who have made the ultimate sacrifice are honored in Massillon’s Veterans Memorial Park.
But sadly, the death of a U.S. sailor from Massillon, who was one of more than 2,400 Americans killed at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, has been surrounded by unanswered questions for the past 82 years.
Fireman First Class Walter Fay Schleiter, 22, was one of 429 sailors who perished after the USS Oklahoma was hit by torpedoes and capsized.
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It took the Navy three years to recover all of the remains from the Oklahoma. Sailors like Schleiter, whose remains could not be identified, were buried together in “graves of the unknown” at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii.
The Navy never stopped trying to positively identify all of the sailors who died at Pearl Harbor, but when the remains from the Oklahoma were exhumed, Naval investigators faced a major challenge.