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Several USS Oklahoma Crew Members Exhumed For Identification, Rest To Come Later This Year

The USS Oklahoma (BB-37) righted to about 30 degrees during the salvage operation at Pearl Harbor, March 29, 1943.
U.S. Navy
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National Archives
The USS Oklahoma (BB-37) righted to about 30 degrees during the salvage operation at Pearl Harbor, March 29, 1943.

On Monday the U.S. military removed the remains of several unidentified service members killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor from the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. The sailors and Marines were spread among five caskets, and served aboard the USS Oklahoma when it was torpedoed by the Japanese and capsized.

“The remains will go to our lab right here in Hawaii, said retired Army lieutenant general Michael Linnington, who leads the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. “We will go through some cleaning and some dental processing, and then the remains will go to our lab in Omaha for fuller accounting.”

Television station KHON reports Monday’s “dignified transfer” ceremony took place at the cemetery that’s commonly known as Punchbowl due to the volcanic crater it occupies:

An Honor Guard made up of members from each military branch escorted the remains of men killed nearly three quarters of a century ago while serving on board the U.S.S. Oklahoma. . . . One by one the honor guard took five caskets from the Punchbowl grounds. Some of the graves are co-mingled, so it’s not clear how many will be identified. Officials told [reporter Jai Cunningham] they’re confident they’ll be able to identify all the remains. “The families that are still suffering. So we’re here to make sure that we honor their memory, and we also do everything that we can to ensure that the remains are handed back to the loved ones,” said [cemetery public affairs specialist ] Gene Maestas.

429 crew members died in the December 7, 1941 attack. The remains of 388 service members have been buried in 45 graves marked “unknown” for the past seven decades, according to Hawaii News Now:

"Three hundred and eighty-eight heroes from the Oklahoma in total will be disinterred by the end of this summer," Linnington said. Fifteen caskets have been disinterred so far. More Dignified Transfers will be held during the coming weeks. "There are many more that are going to take place. We're at the beginning of this process," Maestas said. The Accounting Agency estimates it will take five years to finish the identification work.

In April the Defense Department announced it would disinter the remains of the unaccounted for Oklahoma crew members, saying analysis indicated most of them could be identified. 35 crew members were buried after positive identification in the years immediately following the attack. The rest were buried in Punchbowl as unknowns in 1950.

The Navy started trying to salvage the ship in July 1942, and had it completely upright by June 1943, allowing for the removal of the rest of the human remains. The Oklahoma was decommissioned in 1944 after the Navy determined the ship was too damaged to be saved. While being moved to a scrapyard in California in 1947, it sank during a storm. The ship’s final resting place has never been conclusively determined.

Several artifacts from the World War I-era battleship have been incorporated in various memorials throughout the state. The ship’s anchor sits along Broadway Ave. between NW 23rd Street and Automobile Alley in Oklahoma City. The mast has been incorporated into a park in Muskogee, and the ship’s wheel is on display in the Oklahoma History Center across the street from the state Capitol.

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Brian Hardzinski is from Flower Mound, Texas and a graduate of the University of Oklahoma. He began his career at KGOU as a student intern, joining KGOU full time in 2009 as Operations and Public Service Announcement Director. He began regularly hosting Morning Edition in 2014, and became the station's first Digital News Editor in 2015-16. Brian’s work at KGOU has been honored by Public Radio News Directors Incorporated (PRNDI), the Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters, the Oklahoma Associated Press Broadcasters, and local and regional chapters of the Society of Professional Journalists. Brian enjoys competing in triathlons, distance running, playing tennis, and entertaining his rambunctious Boston Terrier, Bucky.
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