U.S. plans to exhume and identify remains of 88 Pearl Harbor sailors who were buried as unknowns

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 has identified hundreds of crew members — including U.S. Navy Fireman 1st Class Edward D. Bowden in October — 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.

According to the DPAA, one officer who led an impromptu rescue party noted that “most of the men who were burned were unrecognizable,” but they succeeded in moving many of their shipmates off of the burning wreckage and pulling others out of the nearby waters.

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

“Still grieving”

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.

He shared the story of one woman who was mystified why she was always so sad around Christmas. She later noted that her grandmother, who lost a son on the Arizona, and her mother, who lost her brother, never celebrated the holiday as it came just weeks after the anniversary of his death.

“As she got older, she realized that her grandmother and her mom were still grieving about this loss,” Kline said. “And it fell on her as well.”

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.

Kline was frustrated and even infuriated by the military’s past reluctance. But his feelings have changed.

“I’m happy that we were able to kind of pull this together and turn that hard no,” Kline said.

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.

In 2024, Lou Conter, the sole living survivor from the sinking of the USS Arizona, died in California at the age of 102.