WESTVILLE, Ind. — About 40 people attended the burial of a World War II Navy pilot whose remains were identified last year after being excavated from a mountainside crash site on O'ahu.

An American Legion honor guard fired a 21-gun salute over Ensign Harry "Bud" Warnke's cremated remains Friday at Westville Cemetery in northern Indiana.

A Navy official presented a U.S. flag that accompanied the urn to Warnke's 87-year-old sister, Myrtle Tice.

"He wrote mostly to my mother and sometimes to my husband and I," Tice said. "Then we didn't hear from him. We found out about the crash, and my family believed that he crashed in the ocean. Communication wasn't that great back then."

Warnke's plane crashed on June 15, 1944, in the Ko'olau Range on O'ahu as he was training in aerial dives. He was 23.

A few days after the crash, a search team found wreckage from Warnke's plane on a mountain slope along with a shoe fragment which was buried at the site.

According to military reports from the time, items and remains from the wreckage were collected and buried at the site shortly before Warnke's unit left the island for combat.

But Warnke's remains weren't identified until last year, after the Hawai'i-based Joint POW /MIA Accounting Command excavated the crash site and found them.

Warnke's cremated remains were returned to the family Thursday for burial Friday in the Westville gravesite. Warnke's parents reserved the site for him after receiving the news in 1944.

Pat Turner, Warnke's niece, said she knew him only from photographs. "No matter how long it takes, every soldier should be recognized, no matter who it is," she said.