Pearl Harbor: Military digs up remains of victims

HONOLULU — The military on Monday exhumed the unidentified remains of USS Oklahoma crew killed in the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor.

The coffins were removed from the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, where they have rested for decades. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said in April it would disinter as many as 388 USS Oklahoma servicemembers to account for missing sailors and Marines.

The project involves disinterring 61 caskets at 45 grave sites at the Honolulu cemetery known as Punchbowl. More than a dozen caskets have already been exhumed.

The Oklahoma capsized after being hit by Japanese torpedoes in the Dec. 7, 1941. Altogether, 429 sailors and Marines on board were killed. Only 35 were identified in the years immediately after the attack. Hundreds of those who weren’t identified were buried as unknowns at cemeteries in Hawaii. In 1950, they were reburied as unknowns at Punchbowl.

The military is acting now, more than 70 years after the men died, because advances in forensic science and technology, as well as genealogical help, from family members have made it possible to identify more remains.

The identification work will be conducted at Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency laboratories in Hawaii and Nebraska, and at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. The agency expects to identify about 80 percent of Oklahoma crew members now considered missing in the next five years.