Army divers wore gear from the 1940s to inter a Pearl Harbor survivor on the USS Arizona

Bruner suffered burns on 80% of his body, but went back into service after he healed. He served aboard the USS Coghlan in eight other battles against Japan's forces, CNN reports.

The Mark 5 helmet and dive suit was used from 1916 until the 1980s, according to the US Naval Undersea Museum.

"In retrospect, it's very historical and super-cool, but it's kind of uncomfortable," Melendez told the Star-Advertiser. "It's super heavy and it's kind of amazing to think that it took so long to kind of upgrade it."

While the Navy has performed this kind of ceremony before for other Pearl Harbor survivors, the divers have always worn modern diving kits.

"I think it was a really fitting tribute and I think it's an interesting way to kind of close out the last of the interments — to have it done not only with the ceremony that we normally do, but to have historic hardhats like it would have been during the salvage in World War II," Brett Seymour, the deputy chief of the National Park Service's Submerged Resources Center, told the Star-Advertiser.

"It was historical. I was left speechless, honestly," Melendez told the Star-Advertiser. "It was a very in-the-moment experience. Just kind of taking it all in and realizing what we were doing and the history that's being made and remembering Lauren Bruner and everything that he had done."