Photo By Petty Officer 1st Class T. Logan Keown | HONOLULU (Dec. 7, 2021) — Taps is played after the remains of the final 33...... read more read more
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On the 80th anniversary of the cataclysmic attack on America’s Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 2021, a gathering was held at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific to witness the re-interment of unidentified remains from the USS Oklahoma (BB 37) and to commemorate all service members who died aboard the ship, in particular the crewmen that have not been individually identified.
The event marked the end of the USS Oklahoma Identification Project, a six-year partnership between the U.S. Navy, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) and the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System.
“Over the past 18 years, DPAA has used modern DNA analysis techniques to identify the remains of casualties lost aboard USS Oklahoma during the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Navy Casualty has worked tirelessly to return those Sailors to their loved ones,” said Capt. Robert McMahon, director of Navy Casualty. “Our involvement in this project has been a great honor for Navy Personnel Command and the team at Navy Casualty.”
In the end, 33 Oklahoma crewmembers could not be identified by comparing remains with DNA samples from relatives or dental records. The project, which began in earnest in 2015, was able to identify 355 Sailors and Marines.
“This is a momentous occasion. To state that it is a milestone in the Department of Defense history is not an understatement,” said Kelly McKeague, DPAA director. “We have fulfilled a sacred promise made to the loved ones who made the supreme sacrifice, as well as to their families.”
On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, 429 Oklahoma crewmembers perished after the battleship was struck by eight torpedoes, capsizing within approximately 15 minutes. Hundreds of crewmembers were trapped below decks, and although rescuers made every effort to reach them, only a handful could be saved and hope for the rest, reluctantly abandoned.
Across America, and without the benefit of real-time global communications technology, families anxiously searched for any scrap of information concerning their loved ones. Pouring over newspaper reports and listening to radio broadcasts, they waited, many even writing desperate letters to the then-Bureau of Navigation and even to the Secretary of the Navy himself.
Inevitably, the dreaded notification of death would arrive.
“It affected our family greatly,” said Carol Sowar, niece of brothers Harold and William Trapp of LaPorte, Indiana. “It really affected my mother who was their sister; because she was so close to her uncles she missed them for the rest of her life. She said her mother died of the grief of losing her two sons and my grandfather died shortly after my grandmother. “
“It affected me because it was hard for my mom to talk about her family, and then it wiped out that whole side of the family,” Sowar said. “There were no Christmases spent together, no Thanksgivings spent together, no summer get-togethers with uncles. I think they would’ve been wonderful uncles to me and to my children, wonderful great uncles. Our family never recovered from the loss. It continued down through the generations.”
Other notifications would follow; the remains were unrecoverable at first, then unidentifiable. Hope of survival was lost, but at each subsequent receipt, hope of recovery increased.
During the massive salvage efforts between 1942 and 1944, the majority of remains would eventually be recovered and buried, but it was not until after the war that identification efforts began. Ultimately, 35 members of the crew were identified, leaving 394 of the crew still unaccounted for. The unidentified were buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific – also known as the Punchbowl – awaiting scientific advancements that could reignite identification efforts.
In 2003, a single casket was disinterred from the Punchbowl Cemetery, largely in part to the efforts by Pearl Harbor survivor Ray Emory, who never gave up hope that his comrades could be identified.
“At his house – he called it the war room – it literally was charts, maps, files, stacks of paper, and he poured over all of it to pull out these little threads of information,” McKeague said. “He then presented us with a compelling case to say, ’I think in this particular casket are these individuals.’”
Several DNA samples were taken from what appeared to be five unknowns, and that was when DPAA discovered how commingled the USS Oklahoma remains were.
“My role started in 2003 when I was an analyst and we got the first set of samples from the single USS Oklahoma casket,” said Dr. Timothy McMahon, director of DNA Operations for the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System. “We were able to generate over 90 mitochondrial DNA sequences, so almost a quarter of the missing individuals were just in that one casket.”
With hope that more crewmembers could be identified, another casket was disinterred in 2007, also based on research by Ray Emory.
“This was actually our first modern-day identification – Alfred Livingston – for the Oklahoma efforts,” said Carrie LeGarde, lead anthropologist for the project, working from the DPAA laboratory at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska. Eventually, DPAA anthropologists were able to make five more identifications from the 2003 casket.
When Dr. McMahon became the chief scientist for the DNA lab in 2014, AFMES, DPAA and Navy Casualty developed the recommendation for DoD to move forward with more disinterments.
‘We push forward for the disinterment of the USS Oklahoma unknowns and explained why we would be successful at this,” Dr. McMahon said. “At that time we had crossed the 80 percent threshold with Family Reference Samples (FRSs). I was able to meet a lot of the family members at events we call Family Member Updates (FAMUs), and was able to collect the DNA FRS swabs in person from them and to hear the stories of their missing loved ones.”
Project Oklahoma began in 2015 when all Oklahoma remains were disinterred, giving the scientists a total of 388 unaccounted-for Sailors and Marines. Using mitochondrial and autosomal DNA analysis, the DoD scientists have achieved remarkable results.
“Since then, we have identified 355 service members. So a total of 361 modern-day identifications with those 35 historical identifications brings us to the 396 total identified from the ship,” LeGarde said.
The project had a tangible effect on everyone associated with it. The family of twins Leo and Rudolph Blitz of Nebraska held a reunion during the Navy’s notification visit. One woman discovered a family member she never knew about living in Hawaii, and met with him during the week of the re-interment ceremony.
“When I heard the news that my uncles had been identified I broke down and cried,” Sowar said. “It was such a relief. It was hard to believe it had finally really happened. I have regrets that my mother did not live to see this day, but I am thankful that I was able to find the closure the whole family needed. After all these years it seems like a miracle.”
Several families of the uninterred Sailors, at the Navy’s invitation, were present for the burial, as were families of Sailors already identified and laid to rest, who came to show solidarity.
“It says a lot about the character of those families, and our nation, that they were willing to travel such a long distance, to show support for the families of the unidentified sailors and shipmates of their loved ones,” Capt. McMahon said.
Providing answers for families who have waited eight decades is the driving motivation behind the effort, according to many who have worked on the project.
McKeague recalled attending a funeral at Arlington, where the Navy buried Radioman 3rd Class Eddie Griffiths of Dayton, Ohio. In attendance was Eddie's 86-year old sister, Betty Jo.
“Betty Jo told me after the funeral that she was seven years old when Eddie went missing, and that she adored Eddie; she looked up to him,” he said. “She said that when the Navy presented her family his Purple Heart, she remembers her mom writing back to the Navy telling them that from a very early age, Edie said, and I quote, ‘a flag not worth fighting for is not worth living under.’”
“It's individuals like Radioman 3rd Class Eddie Griffiths and Betty Jo, which is why all of us do this noble, purposeful mission on behalf of the Department of Defense, but more importantly, on behalf of a nation,” McKeague said.
“Early on in 2015, our past-accounting section set up a memorial board, and it has the pictures of all the unknown service members from the USS Oklahoma,” McMahon said. “They then generated key chains for each service member, and these were given to all of the staff. Mine was for Chief Pharmacist’s Mate James Cheshire. In 2018, it was an honor to finally review his BTB (believed-to-be) report as it went out the DPAA to support his identification. After 80 years, to bring those answers to the families and bring those fallen heroes home, and named, is what keeps us going in this mission.”
“It's our responsibility as a nation to bring these Sailors and Marines home to their families,” Capt. McMahon added. “We've sent them off to war, and we should return all of them back to their families, regardless of time or effort. That's our job.”
“I think the closure I received with the help of the Navy was more than I could ever have dreamed of,” said Sowar, whose uncles were buried at NMCP in June. “Truly, it was a very emotional experience for me being able to see my uncles reinterred with respect, dignity and the support of many current Navy personnel. It affected our whole family, and we, the three generations of us who remain and who will pass on the memory of Will and Hal, are all grateful. We have found peace knowing they are ‘home.’”
Paying respects to the fallen Sailors and their families were Hawaii Governor David Ige, as well as Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro; Adm. Samuel Paparo, commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet; Rear Adm. Alvin Holsey, commander, Navy Personnel Command; Rear Adm. Darius Banaji, deputy director, DPAA; and Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Russell Smith.
Also in attendance was Oklahoma survivor and former Seaman 1st Class, David Russell of Oregon, who escaped the capsizing ship to serve aboard USS Mahan as a gunner’s mate a mere 16 days after the attack. He would go on to serve another 19 years.
In his remarks, Del Toro paid tribute to the 33 Sailors, their families and to the survivors.
“I want to thank the families of the USS Oklahoma and the survivors, who have kept the enduring spirit of that ship alive throughout the years,” Del Toro said. “Although we don't currently have the technology to identify them, we know who they are, we know what they did. They were, and will always remain, patriots, heroes and our shipmates. For nearly 250 years, we have committed to never leaving a Sailor or a Marine behind. We will always remember those who have sacrificed for our nation.”
Although the USS Oklahoma Project has officially ended, the Navy, due to delays from the pandemic, has yet to escort nearly 100 Oklahoma Sailors to their final resting place, Capt. McMahon explained.
In addition, efforts to identify crewmembers of the USS California and the USS West Virginia, which also suffered losses at Pearl Harbor, are ongoing, as well as service members from Korea and Vietnam.
Despite the re-interment, hope remains for families of the 33 that advancing technology or a much-needed FRS will lead to answers for them.
“We will be able to utilize references as far out as a great-great aunt and uncle, or a first cousin once removed,” Dr. McMahon said. “This basically means that anyone that is within four generations of the missing service member works as a nuclear reference for us and that'll be groundbreaking for assisting with identifications.”
Even though she didn’t know that much about her family member being buried, Kalia Lucas made the trip to pay homage to her distant cousin, Mess Attendant 1st Class Randall Walter Brewer of Richmond, Virginia.
“We know so little about him, but it is such an honor to be here,” said Lucas, herself a retired Navy lieutenant. “As a service member, it gives me a high sense of hope that someday we will have answers.”
“I’m not sure if they will be identified one day, but I hope so,” Sowar said. “I hope it happens while there are still people alive who remember them.
| Date Taken: | 12.07.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 12.22.2021 12:40 |
| Story ID: | 411776 |
| Location: | HONOLULU, HAWAII, US |
| Web Views: | 176 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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