80 years after Pearl Harbor, effort to identify USS Oklahoma remains comes to a close

A significant undertaking, a project to identify the remains of nearly 400 sailors and Marines who were killed in the sinking of the USS Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, is coming to a close.

The federal agency that’s been leading the project, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, announced Thursday that the remaining still-unidentified remains of sailors and Marines lost aboard the USS Oklahoma are being returned to Hawaii on June 2.

Although some are still unidentified, what a successful mission this has been.

And it’s fitting to recognize this extraordinary effort on Memorial Day, when we honor the men and women who have died while serving in the U.S. military.

This remarkable project has identified 338 individuals from the battleship USS Oklahoma.

That’s 338 families who now have remains of their loved ones who were lost on that date that will live in infamy.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve written about two of those sailors with local ties whose remains have been positively identified by this project.

U.S. Navy Fireman 2nd Class Carl M. Bradley, of Shelley, Idaho, was 19 and on board the USS Oklahoma. His remains were positively identified in February. He will get a proper burial in his hometown on June 26.

U.S. Navy Boilermaker 1st Class William Eugene Blanchard, of Tignall, Georgia, was 24 years old when he was killed in the attack. His remains were identified in January, and his family, including Chris Blanchard of Boise, plans a burial on June 7 in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.

“Even more remarkable than the collective success of this project are all the families who were able to receive the remains of their loved one, whose last measure of devotion was made aboard the Oklahoma,” Kelly McKeague, director of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, said in a press release announcing the project coming to a close.

The USS Oklahoma was moored at Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, when the ship was attacked by Japanese aircraft. The USS Oklahoma sustained multiple torpedo hits, which caused it to quickly capsize.

The attack on the ship resulted in the deaths of 429 crewmen.

From December 1941 to June 1944, Navy personnel recovered the remains of the crew, which were subsequently interred in the Halawa and Nu’uanu Cemeteries.

In September 1947, the American Graves Registration Service disinterred the remains from the two cemeteries and were able to confirm the identifications of 35 men from the USS Oklahoma at that time.

The unidentified remains were then reburied in 46 plots at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. In October 1949, a military board classified those who could not be identified as non-recoverable.

That’s where the remains of 394 unidentified sailors and Marines stayed until 2015, when Department of Defense officials approved the phased disinterment of all the USS Oklahoma caskets from the National Memorial Cemetery.

With so many of the remains commingled in caskets, the Accounting Agency spent several years sorting and analyzing more than 13,000 bones and associating them to missing sailors and Marines.

Genealogists from the Navy and Marine Corps casualty offices found family members for DNA testing and matching.

Just an incredible undertaking.

As for those remains that are still unidentified, ceremonies in Nebraska and Hawaii will honor them, and the remains will be turned over to the Navy for burial at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific on the 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor later this year.

“One of the things said in the military is, ‘You never leave a fallen comrade,’ ” Sgt. 1st Class Sean Everette, public affairs officer for the Accounting Agency, told me in an interview in March. “And it’s our duty for those who haven’t been brought home yet, it’s our duty to go out and try to bring those service members home.”

Scott McIntosh is the opinion editor of the Idaho Statesman. You can email him at smcintosh@idahostatesman.com or call him at 208-377-6202. Follow him on Twitter @ScottMcIntosh12.