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Remains of USS Arizona crew buried as unknowns will be exhumed for DNA identification

The U.S. military plans to exhume the remains of 88 sailors and Marines killed when the USS Arizona was bombed during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and who were buried as unknowns in a Honolulu cemetery.

It’s part of an effort to use advances in DNA technology to attach names to those the military was unable to identify after the aerial assault 85 years ago.

The disinterments from the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific are due to begin in November or December, Kelly McKeague, the director of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, said Thursday in a statement.

About eight sets of remains will be removed every two to three weeks, and the DNA will be compared with samples collected from family members of missing troops.

Dozens of ships sank, capsized or were damaged in the Dec. 7, 1941, bombing of the Hawaii naval base, which catapulted the U.S. into World War II.

The identification effort follows earlier projects dating back a decade to use DNA for Pearl Harbor unknowns. The agency identified hundreds of crew members from the USS Oklahoma, USS West Virginia and other ships using similar methods.

The Arizona sank just nine minutes after being bombed, and its 1,177 dead account for nearly half the servicemen killed in the attack. Today the battleship still lies where it hit bottom, with more than 900 sailors and Marines are entombed inside.

Remains in that underwater grave will stay where they are. Only those in the cemetery will be exhumed.

Robert Edwin Kline was a 22-year-old gunner’s mate second class when he was killed on the Arizona. Kevin Kline, a real estate agent in northern Virginia, said he was always told that his great-uncle’s remains were on the ship. It was only a few years ago that he heard some crew members were buried as unknowns in a cemetery.

Kline does not have high expectations that his great-uncle will among those identified. But he believes that families that do get a DNA match, some of whom continue to grapple with “generational grief,” will get some closure.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, which is part of the Department of Defense, resisted exhuming the Arizona remains for years, saying it would not be pragmatic because it had medical and dental records and relatives’ DNA samples for only a small share of the men — just 1% of the families as of 2021.

Kline and an organization he founded, Operation 85, has spent the past three years locating families and arranging for them to share their DNA. Only about 15 of the 1,500 people he contacted declined to participate.

So far, family members of 626 sailors and Marines have shared their DNA, Kline said. That’s just under 60% of the crew members still missing, and sample kits are still coming in.

The remains will be taken to the agency’s lab at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam for analysis. DNA samples will be sent to the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

The decision to disinter the Arizona unknowns was first reported by the independent military newspaper Stars and Stripes.



(AP Photo Caleb Jones)
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