NEW ORLEANS — More than seven decades after being killed during World War II, Pvt. Earl Joseph Keating is finally coming home to his native New Orleans after his remains were discovered on the Pacific island where he died in 1942.

Keating’s nephew, Nadau “du Treil” Michael Keating Jr., was only 6 months old when his 28-year-old uncle was killed Dec. 5, 1942. The private died at a place that came to be known as the Huggins Roadblock on the island of New Guinea just north of Australia — part of the bloody campaign to defeat the Japanese in the Pacific theater.

But the nephew remembers his grandmother’s message to him when he was 12 years old and she was on her deathbed. “She said ‘I want you to remember to please find Earl with your Dad. Help your dad find Earl,”’ he said.

Pvt. Keating was part of a group manning the roadblock when it came under withering attacks by the Japanese. The group repelled the onslaughts but suffered heavy casualties, including Keating and fellow Pvt. John H. Klopp, 25, also of New Orleans. Fellow soldiers buried them together.

But for Keating’s mother back home, the loss of one of her three sons never left her. She wrote the military repeatedly, beseeching them to find her son’s remains, and the family frequently remembered him in prayers.

It wasn’t until decades later that the younger Keating Jr., who lives in Lafayette, La., was able to answer that death bed request with the help of villagers in Papua New Guinea. A villager out hunting came across the remains of the two men and some personal effects.

Word that some remains and effects had been found was eventually passed along to the U.S. military, which sent a team to investigate. The U.S. military runs an extensive effort to recover the remains of missing troops from conflicts around the world. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency investigates reports of service members missing in action from Vietnam, World War II, the Korean War and other conflicts. There are 82,729 people unaccounted for from all conflicts, according to the organization’s website. Yet troops from World War II make up the vast majority — 73,159.

Pvt. Keating will actually be buried in two places. Some of his remains were so intertwined with that of his friend, Pvt. Klopp, that they were buried side by side with Klopp’s remains at Arlington National Cemetery in March.

The remains that were positively identified as Keating’s are arriving today.

During the May 28 funeral services, Keating Jr. plans to read a letter written by his father to Pvt. Keating; it was never read by the young soldier because he died before it arrived.