Kathie Svoboda has never met her Uncle William, but a new relationship has been forged 83 years after his death.
The Navy serviceman, killed in the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, was identified decades later. Through the military’s process of returning lost loved ones to their families, Svoboda said, she’d learned much about him.
“It’s such an intimate ritual,” said the Redding resident, 74.
William Kubinec will be formally buried Friday in a Northern California veterans cemetery.
William Kubinec will be buried in a ceremony attended by his younger sister.
(Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency)
Kubinec of Garrettsville, Ohio, a fireman second class, served aboard the USS West Virginia. At the time of his death at 21, government records indicate, Kubinec’s remains were unidentifiable and he was buried as an unknown person in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii, also known as the Punchbowl.
He was one of about 10 siblings, Svoboda said — her mother, now 96, was the youngest of the family, and just 13 when he died.
Kubinec joined the military as a necessity, Svoboda said, to provide for the family in the last throes of the Great Depression in the late 1930s. His mother, she said, was upset that he wanted to sign up. But he had hemophilia; he would never get in, they thought.
In 2017, Kubinec’s casket was among 35 exhumed that were associated with the West Virginia and sent for DNA testing by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, which works to recover and identify unaccounted-for soldiers. Around this time, Svoboda said, the agency reached out to one of her uncles for a cheek-swab DNA sample.
In 2016, the government launched a next-gen DNA testing method for unidentified fallen soldiers from World War II and the Korean War, according to a Department of Defense article in January. The process has become faster and more accurate over time despite the difficulty in identifying older remains.
Kubinec wasn’t formally identified until November 2019, however, and the uncle they’d initially contacted for the DNA sample had died, Svoboda said. It wasn’t until last year that Svoboda’s mother received a letter explaining what they’d found.
“At first she was a little unsettled, but then she realized he could be put to rest,” Svoboda said of her mother’s reaction.
“He was smart, caring, the peacekeeper of the family,” Svoboda said. One year, her mother had told her, the family did not have enough money for a Christmas tree. The day before their school holiday break, Kubinec asked if he could take the tree from the cafeteria so his family could have one, then carried it home.
The military sent dozens of documents to Svoboda about Kubinec’s DNA testing and his service, including his posthumous Purple Heart.
Kubinec, as a fireman, was probably working in the engine room aboard the West Virginia, Svoboda said. During the Pearl Harbor raid, the ship was “hit by two bombs and at least seven torpedoes, which blew huge holes in her port side. Skillful damage control saved her from capsizing, but she quickly sank to the harbor bottom,” according to Navy military history.
Svoboda was told the engineers were crucial in keeping the ship from capsizing by counter-flooding the engine room, essentially sacrificing themselves to save as many shipmates and ships around them as possible.
The Navy offered to place Kubinec in any cemetery of the family’s choosing — back home in Ohio, or even in Arlington National Cemetery. Because her mother is elderly and unable to travel, they chose to bring him to Redding, so she could see the awarding of his military honors.
“The military makes great efforts to bring their fallen home,” Svoboda said.
Several other World War II soldiers who remained unidentified for decades have been returned to family across California in recent years, including Pfc. Harry M. Seiff, Cpl. Walter L. Clark, Sgt. Charles E. Young Jr. and 1st Lt. Herman Jerry Sundstad.
Kubinec’s funeral will be held at the Northern California Veterans Cemetery in Igo at 2 p.m. Friday following a dignified transfer from Allen and Dahl funeral home at 12:50 p.m.
