US military to exhume 88 USS Arizona unknowns for DNA identification

The U.S. military plans to exhume the remains of 88 sailors and Marines killed aboard the USS Arizona during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and buried as unknowns at a Honolulu cemetery, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced Thursday. The disinterments are scheduled to begin in November or December, agency director Kelly McKeague said in a statement, with DNA compared against samples collected from family members of missing crew. The decision reverses years of military resistance and follows a three-year grassroots effort to assemble the family DNA database needed to make identification feasible.

Family members of 626 sailors and Marines — just under 60 percent of the crew members still missing — have shared DNA with the agency, a threshold reached only after advocates spent years contacting nearly 1,500 families. The effort gives families who have carried grief across multiple generations the first realistic chance of receiving confirmed remains from the attack that killed 1,177 aboard the Arizona 85 years ago.

The U.S. military announced Thursday it will exhume the remains of 88 sailors and Marines buried as unknowns at a Honolulu cemetery after being killed aboard the USS Arizona during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, opening the first realistic path to identification for families who have waited 85 years.

The disinterments from the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific are scheduled to begin in November or December, Kelly McKeague, director of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, said in a statement. About eight sets of remains will be removed every two to three weeks, with DNA compared against samples collected from family members of the missing.

The announcement reverses years of military resistance and caps a three-year grassroots campaign to assemble the family DNA database the agency said was necessary before disinterment would be worth attempting.

The ship and its dead

The USS Arizona sank nine minutes after being bombed on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941. Its 1,177 dead account for nearly half of all servicemen killed in the Japanese attack on the Hawaii naval base, which drew the United States into World War II.

More than 900 sailors and Marines remain entombed inside the battleship, which still rests on the harbor bottom where it sank. Those remains will not be disturbed. Only the 88 crew members interred as unknowns in the Punchbowl cemetery are subject to the new identification effort.

From resistance to reversal

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency resisted exhuming the Arizona remains for years, citing the impracticality of the effort. As of 2021, families of just 1 percent of the crew members had provided DNA samples — far too few to justify the undertaking.

Kevin Kline, a real estate agent in northern Virginia, set out to change that. His great-uncle, Robert Edwin Kline, was a 22-year-old gunner’s mate second class killed on the Arizona. Kline founded Operation 85 and spent three years locating families and arranging for them to submit samples. Of the approximately 1,500 people he contacted, only about 15 declined to participate.

Family members of 626 sailors and Marines have now shared their DNA, Kline said — just under 60 percent of the crew members still missing. Sample kits continue to arrive.

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

Generational grief

Kline said he does not have high expectations that his great-uncle’s remains will be among those identified; family accounts held that Robert Edwin Kline went down with the ship. But he said families who do receive a DNA match — some of whom continue to grapple with what he called “generational grief” — may find some measure of closure.

He described one woman who was long mystified by her deep sadness around Christmas. She came to understand that her grandmother had lost a son on the Arizona, and her mother had lost a brother, and that neither had ever celebrated the holiday in the weeks following 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.”

Process and precedent

Exhumed remains will be taken to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency’s laboratory at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam for analysis. DNA samples will then be sent to the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

The agency has used similar methods to identify hundreds of crew members from other Pearl Harbor vessels, including the USS Oklahoma and USS West Virginia, in identification projects dating back more than a decade. Stars and Stripes, the independent military newspaper, first reported the decision to disinter the Arizona unknowns.