Decades after the USS Arizona sank in flames at Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government has crossed a critical threshold that could finally unlock the identities of more than a hundred sailors still buried as unknowns in Hawaii. Officials announced Friday that enough family DNA samples have been collected to potentially identify at least 60 percent of the battleship's crew members whose remains could be disinterred.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said it can now "formally request and begin planning" the disinterments, a milestone that represents years of effort by families and volunteers to bring home the remains of those killed in the December 1941 attack. The agency will still need Pentagon approval before excavations can begin, but the announcement signals the project has entered a new phase.
On December 7, 1941, Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor killed more than 2,400 American military personnel. The USS Arizona alone lost 1,177 crew members. Hundreds of those killed aboard the battleship were burned beyond recognition and buried as "unknowns" in nearby cemeteries after the wreckage was cleared. Hundreds more remain entombed inside the Arizona itself, which sits on the harbor floor as one of America's most sacred war memorials.
The push to identify these forgotten sailors gained momentum in 2023 when Kevin Kline, the grandnephew of USS Arizona gunner's mate Robert Edwin Kline, founded Operation 85, a privately funded civilian organization dedicated to locating and connecting families of the dead. The group's name references the approximate number of unknowns still awaiting identification.
Operation 85 built on the success of a previous effort that identified more than 360 crew members from the USS Oklahoma who had been missing since Pearl Harbor. By recruiting families to provide DNA samples for comparison with remains, the organization overcame what many had considered an insurmountable logistical and scientific challenge.
In 1947, 170 of the unknown sailors killed at Pearl Harbor were exhumed. More than 100 were successfully identified at the time, but dozens remained unrecognizable and were reburied at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. Those remains, potentially 141 individuals from commingled graves, are now the focus of the identification effort.
The DPAA's statement specifically acknowledged Operation 85's work, crediting the organization's "devoted efforts over the past three years" with reaching the 60 percent milestone. In a New Year's Eve post on social media, Kline called identifying the Arizona's last unknowns a "calling" and reposted the DPAA announcement with the message "Well, it's about time!"
The agency is now asking families with potential connections to missing USS Arizona crew members to contact Operation 85 to assist in the identification process.
Author James Rodriguez: "This isn't just bureaucratic progress, it's the government finally saying yes to something families have been asking for since 1947, and it took a determined grandson and a private outfit to make it happen."
Comments