USS Oklahoma

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Ken_NJ

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Source: Remains from USS Oklahoma to be exhumed - CNN.com

Another article: http://www.stripes.com/news/pacific/hawaii/in-reversal-dod-to-exhume-uss-oklahoma-unknowns-1.340167

Remains of up to nearly 400 unaccounted for service members tied to the USS Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor will be exhumed this year, the Defense Department announced Tuesday.

The hope is that most of the battleship's sailors and Marines can be identified.

"The secretary of defense and I will work tirelessly to ensure your loved one's remains will be recovered, identified, and returned to you as expeditiously as possible, and we will do so with dignity, respect and care," Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work said in a statement. "While not all families will receive an individual identification, we will strive to provide resolution to as many families as possible."

The USS Oklahoma sank when it was hit by torpedoes on December 7, 1941, during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. A total of 429 sailors and Marines on the ship were killed.

Thirty-five crew members were positively identified and buried in the years immediately after the attack, according to the Defense Department. By 1950, all unidentified remains were laid to rest as unknowns at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

In 2003, five more service members were identified, with the help of historical evidence from Pearl Harbor survivor Ray Emory, 93.

Emory, a native of Peoria, Illinois, was serving as a seaman first class on the light cruiser USS Honolulu that fateful day.

After the war, Emory worked in Washington state before moving to Hawaii about 30 years ago. The retiree made it his mission to ensure graves are properly identified.

"It's something I looked forward to for a long time," he told CNN about Tuesday's announcement.

Speaking by phone from Honolulu, Emory said that proper identification means a lot to the families of those who lost loved ones -- and to him.

Next of kin were being notified starting Tuesday. Service members who are identified will be returned to their families for burial, with full military honors.
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unknown KIA's buried in mass graves as I understand.
The DNA will connect the families.
 
That's what I thought (couldn't see them cutting through a highly unstable ship). Hopefully they have a high rate of success!
 
85 gt kid said:
Are they talking about the un marked graves being exhumed or remains inside the Oklahoma?
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You're thinking of Arizona.

Oklahoma currently resides at the bottom of the Pacific somewhere between Oahu and California.
 
arrrrrgh .... still can't post illustrations and an error always appears .... standing by Sir !
 
Gun Grape said:
I didn't think "Talk like a Pirate day" was until Sept 19



Just sayin :biggrin:
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Since when does a "Pirate" know how to read a calendar? They know a booty ship when they see one. They know how to swing two cutlasses at one time (a medieval reinactor once told me that a single pirate with two cutlasses could take out an entire Kendo school because he doesn't follow the rules). I have a modern "Pirate" Cutlass (patterned after Johnny Depp's movies) that is a beuty of 410 stainless steel with lots of fancy reliefs on the handguard. It is a better balance than my step father-in-law's saber when he was an officer in the Hungarian Cavalry.
 
There's an irony here that the only thread that's till afloat in Naval Warfare is a Battleship!

I think we are about to get an education on "how a pirate don't need no calender"! :cool:

Father-in- law in the Hungarian Calvary? :confu:
 
juxtaposition is the word for the day !

All the WAB'ers cut off from a thread and mixed together on BB's.
No better definition in Webster's to illustrate ....

"yes I still get that darn "error message" when I hit the "Post Quick Reply" button!
 
SlaterDoc said:
There's an irony here that the only thread that's till afloat in Naval Warfare is a Battleship!

I think we are about to get an education on "how a pirate don't need no calender"! :cool:

Father-in- law in the Hungarian Calvary? :confu:
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Yes. Before WW II he was an officer in the Cavalry as well as a jockey. He rode in a number of races in Austria and afterwards all would go to Sacher's Schnitzelbank for dinner. Sacher's was known as the best hotel and restaurant in all of Vienna. My great grandmother was also of that family but she married one of the Kaiser's tailors before moving to Norwalk, Wisconsin.

When Germany "annexed" Hungary in WW II, my father-in-law was then put in charge of a special anti-aircraft Battalion made up 40mm guns (no Acht Acht's). After the war he had to --- umm --- relocate to Venezuela as the Russians were not to fond of Battalion commanders trying to shoot down their airplanes.

But there is a personal irony in that. One of the supervisors at the National Cash Register factory in Caracas was a Russian pilot (twin engine transports) and became a very good friend of my father-in-law. One day, when the friend came up to the USA to visit us for Christmas, he and my father-in-law were talking about old times and suddenly both broke out in hilarious laughter and hugged each other. They were listing places they saw combat and it turned out my father-in-law's Battalion was trying to shoot our friend's plane down on the same day and time.

What a strange (or would "twisted" be a better word) world we live in.
 
Ooops! Sorry about the double post. I'm trying to let my wife rest (she had major back surgery last week) and this damn phone rings every few minutes by either well meaning friends and relatives or somebody wanting to rebuild my driveway gates.

Will a clay pigeon launcher on a trap range throw telephones into the air? I have a Model 97 Winchester I haven't fired for a while.
 
An update...

HONOLULU

The remains of seven crew members missing since the USS Oklahoma capsized in the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor have been identified, the military said Monday.

The names of the servicemen identified using dental records will be released after their families have been notified.

In June, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency began digging up the remains of nearly 400 USS Oklahoma sailors and Marines from a veterans cemetery in Honolulu where they were buried as “unknowns.”

Within five years, officials expect to identify about 80 percent of the Oklahoma crew members still considered missing.

The military says it started the project because advances in forensic science and technology are improving the ability to identify remains.

On Monday, officials exhumed the last four of 61 caskets containing unknown people from the Oklahoma. Many of the caskets include the remains of multiple individuals.

Families will have the option of receiving remains as they are identified, or waiting until the agency has more pieces of a body or even a complete skeleton. Navy casualty officers will let families know their options.

Altogether, 429 men on board the World War II battleship were killed. Only 35 were identified in the years immediately after.

Identification work will be conducted at agency laboratories in Hawaii and Nebraska. DNA analysis will be conducted at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

More than 2,400 sailors, Marines and soldiers were killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Oklahoma's casualties were second only to the USS Arizona, which lost 1,177 men.
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http://www.voanews.com/content/ap-m...mains-of-7-pearl-harbor-unknowns/3051216.html
 
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