He was the first Coast Guardsman to become a prisoner of war since the War of 1812 and the last known recoverable fallen Coast Guard service member from World War II, according to officials.

On Thursday the remains of Lt. Thomas “Jimmy” Crotty, identified by a Hawaii lab in September, were carefully carried in an flag-draped casket to a C-130J Super Hercules at Coast Guard Air Station Barbers Point for the long-overdue journey home and a hero’s burial Saturday in Buffalo, N.Y.

In the early months of the war in the Philippines in late 1941 and early 1942, Crotty, an expert in mine warfare, took on a commandolike role while serving as executive officer on the Navy minesweeper Quail, overseeing the demolition of U.S. assets to keep them from falling into Japanese hands.

At one point he stripped the damaged sub USS Sea Lion of its equipment and loaded it full of depth charges to sink it.

The Quail attacked enemy aircraft, and Crotty, 30, helped clear mines for American submarines. On Corregidor Island, as the enemy closed in, Crotty commanded Marine Corps and Army artillery guns firing 75-mm shells.

According to Coast Guard historian William Thiesen, Crotty was the only active- duty Coast Guardsman who fought the Japanese at Bataan and Corregidor — single-handedly earning the service’s Defense of the Philippines battle streamer.

“We are deeply honored to be part of returning Lt. Crotty home to his family — and it reminds us that we’re part of a long legacy, that long blue line of Coast Guardsmen that have served in service to their nation,” Rear Adm. Kevin Lunday, commander of the Coast Guard’s District 14 in Honolulu, said after the C-130 had departed.

More than 600 Coast Guard personnel remain missing from World War II, Lunday said, but most were lost at sea and are classified as nonrecoverable.

After the surrender of Corregidor, 9,000 American and Filipino prisoners were taken to Manila and marched 10 miles to Cabanatuan POW camp, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, which has a big lab and administrative offices at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.

Crotty contracted diptheria, which was rampant in the camp, and died July 19, 1942. He was buried in a mass grave outside the prison walls. It was the start of a 77-year wait for closure for his family.

“We didn’t expect to see this happen during our lifetimes,” Crotty’s niece, Peggy Crotty Kelly, recently told The Buffalo (N.Y.) News.

A final note home from Crotty to his mother came in February 1942, five months before he died, according to the newspaper.

“The one thought forever kept in mind is for a joyful return to the homeland, so that we can enjoy fully the sincere happiness which is only to be found amidst family tides,” the Coast Guardsman wrote.

After the war the American Graves Registration Service exhumed the bodies and tried to make identifications, but “due to the circumstances of the deaths and burials, the extensive commingling and the limited identification technologies at the time, all of the remains could not be identified,” the accounting agency said in early October.

The “unknowns” were interred in the present-day Manila American Cemetery and Memorial. In January 2018, remains associated with the common grave that Crotty was interred in were sent to the accounting agency’s Hawaii lab.

With the ability to use DNA analysis, and also using dental and anthropological analysis, scientists were finally able to identify the New Yorker.

Thiesen, the Coast Guard historian, wrote that the story of Lt. Crotty “had been lost and forgotten like the heroic sacrifices made by thousands of defenders of Bataan and Corregidor,” with little individual recognition for his bravery.

In 2010 the family was presented a Bronze Star and Purple Heart. On Thursday six white-gloved Coast Guard members carried Crotty’s casket to the plane as a bagpiper played “Amazing Grace” and dozens of other service members stood at attention on the tarmac.

On Saturday, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Karl Schultz is expected to be at Crotty’s burial in New York.