The Remains of Randy.

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The Remains of Randy.

July 28, 2015 by Matthew Rozell

This is kind of a quiet big deal. There is a boy from Hudson Falls, New York, and he and 387 others are buried here in commingled settings at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii. Exhumations began last week and are going on right now. He was 19 when he died, his remains were under water for 18 months, and he never came home. Definitely the first boy killed in World War II from our town, and county, maybe even the state. He left school at 17 and joined the Navy. A year later, he was declared missing, and he has never properly been identified.

Imagine what that did to his mother and father, and sister. He’s a big part of my upcoming book, which will be published this week. Looks like I have to go back and add another endnote! But a good one.

Photo by Bruce and Debbie Almeida.

From NPR: Pentagon To Exhume Remains Of Sailors From USS Oklahoma
APRIL 15, 201512:39 PM ET
KRISHNADEV CALAMUR

The Pentagon says it will exhume the remains of 388 sailors and Marines who died on Dec. 7, 1941, in the capsizing of the USS Oklahoma during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.

They are all currently buried as unknowns at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. In all, 429 sailors and Marines perished aboard the Oklahoma; 35 were identified in the years after the attack. The 388 personnel who remained unidentified were buried in 61 caskets at 45 grave sites at the memorial, locally dubbed the “Punchbowl.”

As recently as last year, the Navy told families of those aboard the ship that it opposed the exhumation, noting “a full DNA testing and accounting could take many years and likely leave many of the missing still unaccounted for.” But on Tuesday, the Pentagon reversed course.

Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work, in a memorandum, said: “Recent advances in forensic science and technology, as well as family member assistance in providing genealogical information, have now made it possible to make individual identifications for many Service members long-buried in graves marked ‘unknown.’ ”

The memorandum states that the Defense Department “has contacted families, collected and analyzed DNA from 84 percent of applicable USS Oklahoma family members, and has collected 90 percent of antemortem medical and dental records from the ship’s crew.” Analysis of the evidence suggests that most of the Oklahoma’s crew members could be identified if the 61 caskets were disinterred — a process, the memo said, that should be completed within five years.

More broadly, Work established a broader policy that applies to all unidentified human remains from permanent U.S. military cemeteries from which remains are exhumed for identification. For commingled remains, there must be a 60 percent chance of identification; for individuals, 50 percent.