WASHINGTON (CBS19 NEWS) -- The family of a Virginia man who was killed in the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor has been notified that his remains have been identified.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced on Tuesday that Seaman First Class James W. Holzhauer of Abingdon was accounted for in May 2018.

The 23-year-old was assigned to the battleship USS Oklahoma, which was moored at Ford Island, Pearl Harbor when that facility was attacked on Dec. 7, 1941.

The Oklahoma sustained several torpedo hits, causing the vessel to capsize. This resulted in the deaths of 429 crewmen, including Holzhauer.

According to a release, Navy personnel recovered the remains of those lost between December 1941 and June 1944, subsequently burying those individuals in the Halawa and Nu-uanu cemeteries on Oahu.

In September 1947, the American Graves Registration Service disinterred the remains of U.S. casualties from those cemeteries and sent them to a laboratory at Schofield Barracks.

Staff there were able to identify the remains of only 35 men from the Oklahoma at that time and the rest of the unidentified were buried in 46 plots in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu.

In 1949, those who could not be identified, including Holzhauer, were classified as non-recoverable.

Then in 2015, the DPAA exhumed the USS Oklahoma Unknowns for analysis.

Scientists used anthropological analysis as well as mitochondrial DNA to identify Holzhauer’s remains.

A rosette will be placed next to his name in the Courts of the Missing at the Punchbowl to signify that he has now been accounted for.

DPAA says Holzhauer’s family was only recently fully briefed on the identification, which is why this information has been released at this time.

Holzhauer will be buried once again in the Punchbowl in May.