U.S.
military exhumes remains of unidentified victims of Pearl Harbor attack
Send a link to a friend
[July 28, 2015]
(Reuters) - The remains of
unidentified members of the U.S. military killed in the sinking of the
USS Oklahoma during Japan's World War Two attack on Pearl Harbor were
exhumed in Hawaii on Monday in a bid to identify them, the Department of
Defense said.
|
Five caskets draped in U.S. flags containing the remains of
sailors and Marines who died in the Dec., 7, 1941 attack were
transferred from a cemetery to a laboratory where they will be
analyzed with modern forensic methods, including DNA testing.
The remains were among those of the 388 service members who died in
the attack and were buried as individuals who were unknown. The
Pentagon wants to identify all of them in coming years.
The new effort aims to disinter 61 caskets at 45 gravesites.
"Recent advances in forensic science and technology, as well as
family member assistance in providing genealogical information, have
now made it possible to make individual identifications for many
servicemembers long buried in USS Oklahoma graves marked 'unknown,'"
the Defense Department said in a statement.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2015/Jul/28/images/ads/current/ldn_sda_062409.png) The Marines and sailors who are identified will be returned to their
families for burial with full military honors, the Pentagon has
said.
There has been a series of identification efforts in the decades
since the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, which took 2,403 lives
and drew the United States into World War Two.
The battleship Oklahoma sank when it was hit by torpedoes during the
assault, the Pentagon said. A total of 429 sailors and Marines were
killed. In the years immediately after, 35 crew members were
identified and buried. During salvage operations from 1942 to 1944,
the remaining service members' remains were removed from the ship
and interred as "unknowns" in cemeteries in Hawaii.
[to top of second column] |
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2015/Jul/28/images/ads/current/brickey_lda_061314.png)
In 1947, remains in those cemeteries were disinterred, but requests
to try and identify them using dental records were not approved.
By 1950, all unidentified remains from the USS Oklahoma were
reinterred at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, in
Hawaii, the department said.
The Defense Department laboratory in Hawaii disinterred one casket
in 2003 and was able to identify five servicemen based on historical
evidence provided by a Pearl Harbor survivor.
(Reporting by Victoria Cavaliere in Los Angeles; Editing by Clarence
Fernandez)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2015/Jul/28/images/ads/current/business_directory_filler.png)
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2015/Jul/28/images/ads/current/christian_village_lda_022015.png) |