Minnesota Marine missing in action in WWII returns home after remains identified
A Minnesota man who served in the U.S. Marine Corps during WWII returned home Thursday morning after he was listed as missing in action for eight decades.
Ernest LaVerne Lund was born in Goodhue County in 1915, the second youngest child in a family of 14 siblings. He worked on farms until 1943, when he enlisted in the Marines.
According to his obituary, Lund died on May 21, 1944 while working aboard LST-353 when it exploded in the West Loch Disaster at the Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Hawaii.
The Navy, Army and Marines were staging ships in the area to prepare for a campaign to invade the Mariana Islands. An investigation never determined the cause of the explosion, but according to Naval History and Heritage Command, it is one of the greatest non-combat disasters in U.S. history. Lund was listed as missing in action.
In 1985, a group of kayakers in Pearl Harbor spotted Lund's remains, but he wasn't identified until 2026 with the help of DNA samples from his family.
"It's uplifted us all that he's finally coming home," said Roger McKelvey of Bloomington. "We're finally going to have closure about Ernest Lund, our hero in our family."
His remains arrived in Minneapolis on Thursday morning and formal visitation will be held in Webster, Wisconsin on Friday. His funeral is scheduled for Saturday in Markville, Minnesota.
