U.S. Military to Employ DNA Technology to Identify Pearl Harbor Casualties
The U.S. military is set to commence a significant project aimed at identifying the remains of 88 sailors and Marines who perished during the bombing of the USS Arizona in the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor. These servicemen, currently interred as unknowns in a Honolulu cemetery, are the focus of this endeavor.
Advancements in DNA technology are set to play a crucial role in this effort, which seeks to bring closure to families 85 years after the tragic aerial assault. According to Kelly McKeague, the director of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, disinterments from the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific are scheduled to begin in November or December.
The process will involve the exhumation of approximately eight sets of remains every two to three weeks. These will then undergo DNA analysis, with the results being compared to samples provided by the families of missing military personnel.
The devastating attack on December 7, 1941, led to the sinking, capsizing, or damaging of numerous vessels at the Hawaii naval base, a pivotal event that drew the U.S. into World War II. Efforts to identify the Pearl Harbor unknowns using DNA have been ongoing for a decade, resulting in the successful identification of hundreds of crew members from ships like the USS Oklahoma and USS West Virginia.
The USS Arizona, which sank within minutes of being bombed, accounted for nearly half of the servicemen killed in the attack, with 1,177 casualties. Over 900 of these sailors and Marines remain entombed in the sunken battleship, which still rests on the ocean floor. The current identification efforts will only target those remains buried in the cemetery.
Robert Edwin Kline, a gunner’s mate second class on the Arizona, was just 22 when he died. His great-nephew, Kevin Kline, recently learned that some of the crew were buried as unknowns. Although he has modest expectations about his great-uncle being identified, he believes that families achieving a DNA match will find some relief from what he describes as “generational grief.”
Kevin Kline recounted the story of a woman who discovered her family’s ongoing sorrow around Christmas, a time marked by the memory of a lost relative on the Arizona.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, a Department of Defense entity, had previously opposed exhuming the Arizona remains, citing a lack of sufficient medical, dental, and DNA records for identification. However, through the efforts of Kline’s organization, Operation 85, many families were contacted to provide DNA samples. To date, relatives of 626 sailors and Marines have contributed their DNA, representing nearly 60% of the missing crew.
Despite initial frustration with the military’s stance, Kevin Kline expressed satisfaction with the progress made, saying, “I’m happy that we were able to kind of pull this together and turn that hard no.”
The remains will be transported to the agency’s laboratory at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam for examination, and DNA samples will be forwarded to the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
This initiative was first reported by the independent military newspaper Stars and Stripes.
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