HANKINS — For Naomi Haberli and her entire family, last week's finding of the USS Grayback, a U.S. Navy submarine lost on February 26, 1944 to an enemy air attack off the coast of Okinawa, Japan, has finally brought closure.

Naomi's brother Joseph Forsythe, who joined the Navy right out of high school in 1936, was one of the sailors on board. He was 27 when he died.

She noted that she was excited when she heard the news that after all these years they found his submarine.

“Just knowing they were found ... it was such a good feeling,” Naomi said.

Naomi, who will turn 93 next month, currently resides in Palm City, Florida with her daughter Kim. She and her late husband John owned the Red Barn Campground in Hankins for many years. She doesn't have too many memories of Joseph who was ten years older than her, as he left for the military when she was either nine or 10.

Naomi's son Scott, Sullivan West's Assistant High School Prinicipal, said she would tell him and his siblings growing up of the story of when the family heard that Joseph was missing in action. Naomi said her father's hair turned white overnight.

It was a few years after that when they'd learned what officially happened, even though the family had a good idea what the news meant initially.

For 75 years the submarine's remains were never found ...that is until last week. The search for it never stopped through Project 52 -- a long-term exploration and underwater archeological project that is documenting and preserving the story of the Lost 52 WWII Submarines.

According to an article in Popular Mechanics, Grayback was found in two pieces on the bottom of the ocean, with the front end broken off from the rest of the submarine and a large hole in the stern.

According to that same article, U.S. Navy officials only found out the cause of Grayback's sinking after the war, when translated Japanese wartime records noted a Nakajima B5N “Kate” bomber attacked a surfaced enemy submarine with a 500-pound bomb.

The New York Times recently stated that a single digit error in the grid coordinates of the Navy's translation resulted in the Navy believing USS Grayback was actually a hundred miles away from where it was recently found.

Kim noted that the day when the family heard the news that the USS Grayback had been found, they were up until two or three in the morning communicating with one another.

“The whole family is beside themselves, after all these years, to know where his resting place will be,” she said. “For those of us that didn't meet Uncle Joe ... it was huge.”

Forsythe, a First Class Signalman in the U.S. Navy, was awarded the Bronze Star Medal and a Purple Heart for his heroic service. He had also been recommended for the award of the Navy-Marine Corps Cross.