Welcome Home, Private Owen Mathias Norris

On 24 September 2026, Private Owen M. Norris finally came home. He was laid to rest near his parents and other family members on 26 September – 82 years after he died in an explosion at Pearl Harbor. Owen was born, 1 January 1918, in Marriottsville, Howard County, Maryland. He was the son of Myrtle G. (Howard) and Samuel Emory Thomas Norris.

Owen was my brother Robert’s brother-in-law; the brother of Gladys Norris, my brother’s first wife. However, they never met. In 1944, my brother, Robert, was in the Navy. Although I know that he spent some time in the Pacific theatre during the war, I have no knowledge of whether he was ever stationed at, or stopped at, Pearl Harbor. In any event, Robert did not meet Owen’s sister Gladys until after the war, and they did not marry until 1948.

Owen was drafted on 16 October 1940 and enlisted on 11 March 1941. By 1944, he was assigned to the 29^th Chemical Decontamination Company. He was stationed on Oahu (Hawai’i) and was assigned to Pearl Harbor. On 21 May, tragedy struck.

Pearl Harbor Naval Base was divided into three districts, East, Middle, and West Lochs. The West Loch was the one area that was not attacked in December 1941. It harbored Navy and civilian vessels, as well as large stores of ammunition and fuel. On the afternoon of the 21^st, there were a large number of ships, including over 29 LSTs, preparing to attack Saipan, in the Marshall Islands, on 15 June, to take back control from Japan. Most of the LSTs were loaded with ammunition and gasoline storage tanks, floating vehicle garages, ship repair yards, and personnel quarters. It is believed that LST 353 spontaneously combusts. There was shrapnel and gasoline fires igniting other fires everywhere. Three minutes later there was another explosion followed by a third explosion.

The official death toll was 163 with another 396 wounded. Owen was among the dead. According to a hospital record summarized on Ancestry, he died in hospital. He was 26 years old. However, it is likely they identified him from his dog tags and that his body was not recognizable or identifiable, hence his remains were buried as unknown, and memorialized at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, affectionately known as “Punchbowl,” due to its physical location is an extinct volcano crater. Subsequently, his possessions were gathered and returned to his mother.

Fast forward 80 years, and we now have DNA testing. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency located at what is now known as Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam is charged with identifying the remains of unknown/missing military personnel killed on active duty. It has one of the largest forensic anthropological laboratories in the world. in November 2025, with the impetus of grand-nieces CN and MT and the help of local, Hawaii-based, genealogist Deloris Guttman, the Agency disinterred remains believed to be Owen’s, and using dental, anthropological, isotope, and DNA provided by one of his grand-nieces, they were able to confidently identify his remains in July 2026. With that, the government prepared to make the “Dignified Transfer,” of his remains to the family in Maryland.  

On Saturday, 26 September, for one last time, family members, friends, and an Army honor guard, gathered at the family’s historic church and cemetery, West Liberty United Methodist Church, in Marriottsville, Howard County, for a simple but beautiful graveside service and presentation of the flag to his oldest living niece, ADB.

It does not escape me that the Maryland that Private Norris left in 1941, is not the Maryland to which he has been returned. He left a segregated state, where he could not attend school with white children, or sit in the same sections of movie theaters with white people, and the town where I live was a “Sundown” town, which would have required him, or any Black person, to vacate the downtown, business areas by sundown, or risk being arrested – or worse. He left a Maryland where Thurgood Marshall (for whom the airport where he was welcomed home was named), had been denied entrance to the University of Maryland’s Law School, because they did not admit Black students.  He returned home to a state where the Governor is a Black man. Private Owen Norris died while trying to guarantee that the world would be a safe and better place than the one in which he grew up. Although it is not by any means a perfect world, it is a better world. Mission accomplished.

Welcome Home, Private Norris. Welcome Home.  

Private Norris was postumously awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart for his service to a grateful nation.