After Pearl Harbor, family faced twice the grief and are still looking for answers

SARAH HOFFMAN/THE WORLD-HERALD
Kris Porto’s family never forgets the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. The Omaha woman’s twin uncles, Leo and Rudolph Blitz were killed at age 20 in the 1941 raid. Although their remains were never identified, the Blitz family placed a stone with the twins’ names in Lincoln Memorial Cemetery.

http://www.omaha.com/news/military/after-pearl-harbor-family-faced-twice-the-grief-and-are/article_d5f31cff-b67b-512d-818a-6b74cddeea7e.html

POSTED: MONDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2015 12:30 AM | UPDATED: 4:28 PM, MON DEC 7, 2015.
By Steve Liewer / World-Herald staff writer

In Kris Porto’s old family snapshots, Leo and Rudolph Blitz are always together.

The towheaded twins from Lincoln pose together as toddlers. They are paired up in a church confirmation photo and a family portrait that includes their Russian-born parents and 10 siblings. They are side-by-side in their Navy uniforms, soon after they enlisted together in 1938.

They died together, too, at age 20, believed drowned below the decks of the USS Oklahoma in the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

Only a small percentage of living Americans remember what President Franklin D. Roosevelt described as “a date which will live in infamy,” when Japanese naval forces launched a surprise attack on U.S. military facilities in Hawaii and elsewhere in the Pacific.

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During the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor, twin brothers Leo and Rudolph Blitz were aboard the USS Oklahoma when the battleship was hit by torpedoes. Fearing for Leo's safety, Rudolph left a fellow sailor as he abandoned ship. Rudolph wasn't seen again.