Lifestyle
Texas Family Receives Surprising Dog Tag of WWII Soldier
When Hazel Priest of Victoria, Texas was contacted regarding her brother’s death on Okinawa Island in World War II, she never expected this to happen.
Pfc. Thomas E. Davis was killed in action on Okinawa Island in 1945, but there was no evidence of his death, until now. As the Victoria Advocate reported, however, that all changed when Priest received a phone call about her big brother Tom.
The Japanese non-profit organization Kuentai-USA “searches the Pacific Island for remains of men and women killed uno battle and works to identify them and reconnect them with their families.”
They uncovered Tom’s WWII dog tag from a farm in Okinawa and immediately set out to begin unraveling the mystery and find Tom’s family. They presented Priest with a blue jewelry box holding the dog tag of her brother on their trip to Texas. Priest, in turn, showed them a picture of her brother and told stories about his love of working on the family farm.
While Tom has a gravestone in Indiana, Priest and her family reunited in Victoria to remember Tom and his amazing contributions to the United States of America. One year before his death, he earned the Silver Star during the Battle of Saipan by saving an injured companion.
“I was just shocked that anything could survive in the soil for 70 years and still be legible,” Davis told the Victoria Advocate, “It’s not just a historic artifact. It represents him.”