He got ahold of the Navy's burial records from archives in Washington and determined which ships the dead in each grave were from.
He wrote the government asking why the markers didn't note ship names and asked them to change it.
"They politely told me to go you-know-where," Emory told AP in an interview at his Honolulu home, where he keeps a "war room" packed with documents, charts and maps. Military and veterans policy called for changing grave markers only if remains are identified, an inscription is mistaken or a marker is damaged.
Emory appealed to the late Patsy Mink, a Hawaii congresswoman who inserted a provision in an appropriations bill requiring Veterans Affairs to include "USS Arizona" on gravestones of unknowns from that battleship.
Today, unknowns from other vessels like the USS Oklahoma and USS West Virginia, also have new markers.
Some of the dead, like those turned to ash, will likely never be identified. But Emory knew some could be.
The Navy's 1941 burial records noted one body, burned and floating in the harbor, was found wearing shorts with the name "Livingston."
