WASHINGTON (CBS19 NEWS) -- A sailor from Virginia who was killed in the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor has been identified and is coming home.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced Thursday that 19-year-old Mess Attendant Third Class David Walker of Norfolk was accounted for on Nov. 27.

Due to his family not receiving a full briefing on this information until recently, DPAA says it delayed releasing the announcement.

On Dec. 7, 1941, Walker was serving aboard the battleship USS California when the ship was attacked by Japanese aircraft.

The vessel sustained several torpedo and bomb hits, causing it to catch fire and flood. A total of 103 crewmen, including Walker, were killed.

Between that time and April 1942, the U.S. Navy recovered the remains of the deceased crewmen, which were then interred in the Halawa and Nu-uanu cemeteries.

The remains were then disinterred in September 1947, as part of the American Graves Registration Service’s efforts to recover and identify fallen U.S. personnel in the Pacific Theater.

The remains were transferred to a laboratory at Schofield Barracks where staff were able to confirm the identities of 39 men from the California. Another 42 from the ship had previously been identified after the attack.

The rest of the unidentified remains were buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu.

A military board classified the remains of the unidentified crewmen, including Walker, as non-recoverable in October 1949.

Then in 2018, DPAA personnel exhumed the remaining 25 sets of remains from the California for analysis.

Using anthropological and dental analysis as well as mitochondrial DNA analysis, officials say Walker's remains were finally identified.

Walker’s name is on the Walls of the Missing at the Punchbowl, and now a rosette will be placed next to it to signify that his remains have been found.

Walker is set to be reburied in Arlington National Cemetery in September.