A Marine who survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was returned to the USS Arizona for eternity. “He wanted to be with his friends”.
Divers took an urn holding the cremated remains of Frank Cabiness from the late Marine’s family, swam over to the sunken battleship and placed the container inside during a solemn ceremony in December 2011.
Hawaii-based Marines from the 3rd Marine Regiment performed a rifle salute during the ceremony. Cabiness died in Lewisville, Texas, at the age of 86.
His son, Jerry Cabiness, said his father always wanted to return to his ship.
“He said it was because that’s where he belonged. Because he lost all of his friends there and he wanted to be with them,” Jerry Cabiness said after the service.
The family took some time to fulfill his father’s wishes because they had some financial problems and it is expensive to travel to Hawaii, he said. “But we finally got it done. And it was a beautiful ceremony. The Marines did him proud,” he said.
Dozens of Arizona crew members who lived through the December 7, 1941 attack have chosen to have their ashes interred on the battleship after death.
Many do it out of a desire to join those they left behind.
