Charles Robert Taylor

Charles Taylor was born in Viola, Kansas on 16 November 1918. His father, William, was a successful hardware and tractor salesman; in the mid-1920s the Taylor family moved to Chickasha, Oklahoma to manage a store for the Massey-Harris Implement Company. It proved to be a smart decision – not only could William and Helen raise four children, they could also support a live-in housekeeper and her two daughters.

Tragically, Helen – “a real companion to her husband and children, at all times ready and willing to comfort them in the little difficulties that so often arise” – was hospitalized in early 1929; she died at the age of thirty-three from complications following a major operation. The next year, William remarried – his new wife was Teresa Shellnut, the family housekeeper and longtime friend.

“Bobby” Taylor spent his teenage years in this blended household of three biological siblings and two step-sisters – one of whom, Ailene, was his age. He graduated from high school and, according to the 1940 census, attended a year of college. By the age of 21, he was still living at home – his family had relocated from Chickasha to Carnegie, Oklahoma – and was working as a grocery clerk.

Perhaps desiring a change of profession, or a chance to explore beyond the boundaries of his small town, Bobby Taylor decided to enlist in the Marine Corps. He joined up on 8 May 1940 at Oklahoma City, and was soon on his way to San Diego for boot camp.

Taylor proved to be a good recruit, and as one of the top men in his platoon, was offered a slot at Sea School. He learned the specific duties of a Marine on seagoing service, and on 9 August 1940 received a coveted assignment – the battleship USS Oklahoma. She would be his home for the next sixteen months. During that time, Taylor saw plenty of the Hawaiian Islands – and the surrounding seas – as the Oklahoma took part in maneuvers, cruises, and other activities of the peacetime Navy.

Bob Taylor’s specific duties aboard the Oklahoma are not known; he may have served as an orderly to the ship’s senior naval staff, with the crew of an anti-aircraft gun, or with the five-inch secondary batteries that lined the battleship’s hull. He performed his tasks well and without complaint, earning a promotion to Private First Class in the fall of 1941.

Life aboard the ship was largely uneventful; the most dangerous accident to befall Taylor in all his months aboard was suffering a wrenched knee at a basketball game. This would all change on 7 December 1941.

On 7 December 1941, the Oklahoma‘s crew was preparing for a routine Sunday in Pearl Harbor. Many were brushing off the effects of a Saturday spent ashore; dozens more began lining the rails to wait for the liberty launch. PFC Taylor might have been among them; he might have been below decks in the Marine quarters, on his way to the galley, or preparing for the morning color ceremony. Exactly where he was when the first torpedo hit the Oklahoma will likely never be known.

It took the Japanese pilots less than twelve minutes to transform Oklahoma from a powerful battleship to a smoking wreck, capsized in the muck of Pearl Harbor. In the chaos of the surprise attack, Bobby Taylor disappeared. He was one of over 400 sailors and Marines to lose their lives in the sinking.

Following a painstaking engineering operation, the Oklahoma was righted and refloated in early 1944. While salvage crews cleaned and removed anything of possible military value – and Sergeant Don Lowery returned to collect several personal effects from his locker – other teams searched through years of accumulated muck for human remains. Navy diver Edward C. Raymer was tasked with taking a civilian reporter aboard the ship:

We reached the third deck, and Burns asked me about dead bodies: how many had been found, what was done with them, how they could be identified. I explained that the medics sorted through all the sludge and debris for bones. Then they placed approximately two hundred bones in a bag, which represented the number in a human body. The bag was sent to the army hospital, where a chaplain performed services for the remains.

According to the Oklahoma’s muster records, four hundred of the crew perished aboard her. I finished by saying I was glad it wasn’t my job to explain to the sailors’ families why their loved ones remained unidentified. The reasons could seem very offensive to them.

Slithering through the ankle-deep filth, Burns caught himself as his foot struck something on the deck. He cried out in revulsion when he found it was part of a human body. “My God, I’ve stumbled over a leg. It even has a shoe on what’s left of the foot.”

– Edward C. Raymer, Descent Into Darkness: Pearl Harbor, 1941, A Navy Diver’s Memoir

The remains recovered from the Oklahoma were buried in fifty-two mass graves in Halawa and Nuuanu Cemeteries on the island of Oahu. At the end of the war, the graves were exhumed with the intent of identifying as many of the dead as possible before reinterment in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. Dr. Mildred Trotter, one of the anthropologists in charge of the Central Identification Laboratory, was dismayed to note that “common graves consist[ed] of bones of a kind buried together (i.e. one casket was filled with skulls, another with femurs, another with hip bones and so on)” – a strange decision that “added greatly to the difficulty of the undertaking.” Although her technicians made “a very honest effort… to segregate all the remains from the Oklahoma,” Dr. Trotter admitted that it would take “a very long period (years)” and “different circumstances” to fully separate all the remains. Only 49 men could be identified by the end of 1949; the remainder were buried in 46 common graves in Honolulu.

In 2015, an official directive was passed to exhume the graves of the Oklahoma’s final crew. Modern science and DNA analysis provided the “different circumstances” Dr. Trotter’s note required and have identified hundreds of Oklahoma men.

Among them at last is PFC Charles Robert Taylor – the final member of the Oklahoma Marine detachment to be identified. He was officially accounted for on 26 July 2021.

CENOTAPHS
National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific
USS Oklahoma Memorial, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
Carnegie Cemetery, Carnegie, Oklahoma

FINAL BURIAL
Taylor was buried in Carnegie Cemetery on 7 December 2023.