USS
Oklahoma
Project
USS
Oklahoma
Project
USS Oklahoma Project
Overview
The USS Oklahoma disinterment and identification project at DPAA has succeeded in collectively accounting for all USS Oklahoma unaccounted-for personnel lost on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, and we were able to individually identify 361 of the ship's 394 unaccounted-for personnel who had remained unidentified after the post-war identification efforts. The success of the Oklahoma project has brought answers to these families and has also served as a milestone undertaking that has since helped shape and inform other successful disinterment projects within DPAA.
This process began in 2003 with the disinterment of a single casket of "unknown" USS Oklahoma remains, thought to contain the commingled remains of five individuals. Upon analysis by the DPAA Laboratory, this casket was determined to have contained partial remains of nearly 100 individuals, revealing the breadth of research and scientific work necessary to fully account for the Oklahoma's missing Sailors and Marines.
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Underwater Recovery
In 2009, after several years of policy discussions, the decision was made to request family reference DNA samples from relatives of every missing individual aboard the Oklahoma during the Pearl Harbor attack; in 2015, the remaining caskets of unknowns from the USS Oklahoma were disinterred.
USS Oklahoma (BB-37) circa 1936
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Oklahoma at Sea
USS Oklahoma ProjectNumbers & StatisticsDPAA individually identified 361 Sailors and Marines in our modern efforts. The other 33 individuals were accounted for via group identification. All individuals are accounted for but due to various reasons, those 33 were unable to be individually identified. |
92%of 394 accounted for individually8%cannot be identified individually |
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100%
Complete
The sinking of the USS OklahomaOn the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, a fleet of Japanese carriers launched formations of dive bombers, torpedo planes, and fighters against the vessels moored in the shallows of Pearl Harbor. The attack decimated the ships and personnel of the fleet and thrust the United States into World War II. At the onset of the attack, the battleship USS Oklahoma occupied berth F-5 outboard of the USS Maryland (BB-46) in "Battleship Row" off Ford Island. The first torpedo hit to the ship occurred just before 8 a.m. |
The Pearl Harbor Attack 
USS Hornet lands a direct hit on a Japanese bomber. March 18, 1945. |
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Nevada-class battleship USS Oklahoma (BB-37) (1915)
As the ship listed, her commander gave orders to abandon ship over the starboard side. Within minutes, the ship had sustained damage from multiple torpedoes and capsized, her hull upturned as it came to rest. For some witnesses, the fate of the Oklahoma was the "crowning horror of the day", an "unthinkable" end to a distinguished vessel that "affronted human dignity".
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Some of the sailors who were able to evacuate swam to USS Maryland and to the shores of Ford Island, while other personnel manned smaller boats and began to pull the wounded from the water. In the hours after the sinking, rescue parties were able to establish contact with some of the crew members trapped inside, ultimately rescuing 32 men, but most Sailors and Marines aboard were not so lucky.
The USS Oklahoma Sustained 429 Casualties
Salvage Operations
The vast majority of the unknown servicement of the Oklahoma were recovered from the ship during salvaging operations. These recoveries, conducted initially by divers and salvaging crews as they prepared the Oklahoma for righting and continued once the ship had been re-floated, resulted in a total of fifty-two burials, representing approximately four hundred individuals. The recoveries began with the initiation of salvaging on July 15, 1942 and ended on May 10, 1944, with the majority of remains being removed from the ship after it had been righted. The last burial of USS Oklahoma remains occurred at Halawa, in June 1944, where they remained until 1947.
Historical Investigations
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A Hero Returns
After World War II ended, the War Department assigned the American Graves Registration Service (ARGS), U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps, the responsibility for the recovery and identification of fallen U.S. service personnel in the Pacific Theater. In September 1947, members of the AGRS diinterred the remains of U.S. casualties from the Halawa and Nu'uanu Cemeteries and transferred them to the Central Identification Library at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. The laboratory staff worked to confirm the identities of those buried with name associations and to make additional identifications of those who had been buried as unknowns. Ultimately, as a result of this work, only 35 men from USS Oklahoma were identified.
Dr. Mildred Trotter |
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As analysis of the Unknowns began, ARGS staff believed that the remains were going to be processed and resolved as a group identification, given the complexity of attempting individual identifications. Remains were segregated into groups of similiar skeletal elements to reduce the number of caskets used. However, in 1949, the Office of the Quartermaster General informed the AGRS that the remains of Oklahoma could not be resolved as a group identification. The Quartermaster General justified this decision on several points. Not only were group burials intended to "primarily apply to remains involved in air crashes and in fatalities of tank or other vehicular crews," but also it was believed that "the total number of remains should... closely approach the number of decedents represented in the group." Staff at the Schofield CIL attempted to segregate the remains into individuals for identification. However, Dr. Mildred Trotter, a renowned anthropologist who was overseeing the segregation efforts, had concerns about the scientific integrity of the segreagations due to the commingled nature of the remains. Dr. Trotter attested to the segregations of twennty-seven crania and/or mandibles, but the identification of partial remains was not accepted, and the remains were prepared for burial.
The AGRS buried the unidentified remains known to have been recovered from USS Oklahoma in 46 separate plots in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP). In 1949, U.S. officials determined that those whose remains could not be identified would be classified as "non-recoverable".
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Graves Company
Modern Accounting Efforts
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No further activity occured concerning the unknowns from the Oklahoma until the early 2000s, when Mr. Ray Emory, a Pearl Harbor survivor and researcher dedicated to studying the cases of buried unknowns, became involved in researching the unresolved casualities resulting from the attack. Mr. Emory's analysis of anthropological documents from the Schofield Central Identification Laboratory's 1940s identification efforts, and his conclusion that new identifications could be produced from this analysis, led the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) to request the disinterment of a single casket of Oklahoma unknowns from the NMCP 
In 2003, JPAC disinterred this casket of unknowns from USS Oklahoma, thought to contain the remains of five individuals. Upon further scientific analysis, it was determined to contain the partial remains of almost one hundred crew members from the ship. This disinterment revealed the complexity of USS Oklahoma "unknowns" cases and resulted in years of active, high level negotiations between the Department of Defense, the Service Secretaries, and the agencies responsible for accounting for missing personnel from past conflicts. 
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In 2009, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/MIA Personnel Affairs directed that no more disinterments of unknowns associated with USS Oklahoma would occur until families of the unresolved missing personnel had been located in order to request DNA samples for comparison against samples from the remains. He further directed that all case, medical, and dental records be collected. Upon reaching a designated threshold of family reference sample and document collection, JPAC advanced a plan for the disinterment of all additional caskets associated with the ship in 2012. The Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Manpower and Reserve Affairs declined to pursue disinterment, however, expressing concerns about disturbing the sancity of the graves of the unknowns and reservations about the ability of the accounting community to make a significant number of individual identifications upon disinterment. 
Responding to inquiries from surviving family members and third-party researchers, JPAC and the wider personnel accounting community contended that the extensive commingling required that all of the unidentified remains from the USS Oklahoma be disinterred and processed as a group. This, they argued, would be the most efficient and scientifically-sound method. In 2015, the Deputy Secretary of Defense agreed and issued a policy memorandum directing the disinterment of unknowns associated with USS Oklahoma and establishing thresholds to be met in pursuit of other disinterments of unknowns from World War II and the Korean War who are currently buried in national memorial cemeteries. |
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Responding to inquiries from surviving family members and third-party researchers, JPAC and the wider personnel accounting community contended that the extensive commingling required that all of the unidentified remains from the USS Oklahoma be disinterred and processed as a group. This, they argued, would be the most efficient and scientifically-sound method. In 2015, the Deputy Secretary of Defense agreed and issued a policy memorandum directing the disinterment of unknowns associated with USS Oklahoma and establishing thresholds to be met in pursuit of other disinterments of unknowns from World War II and the Korean War who are currently buried in national memorial cemeteries. |
Since then, DPAA has individually identified 355 of the USS Oklahoma's personnel, a number that also contains a total accounting for every once-missing Marine from the ship. Through all identification efforts, 396 of the USS Oklahoma's personnel have been accounted-for. DPAA made the last individual identification on Oct. 14, 2021, and accounted for the remaining 33 Sailors as a group later that month. Those 33 Sailors are to be reinterred in ceremony at the NMCP on Dec. 7, 2021, the 80th anniversary of the Attack on Pearl Harbor. |
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From June through November 2015, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) personnel, in cooperation with cemetary officials, exhumed all remaining caskets associated with the USS Oklahoma at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific and transferred the remains to one of the two DPAA laboratories located at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, and Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska. At the time of the exhumations, 388 Soldiers and Marines from the Oklahoma were still unaccounted-for. Over the next year, nearly 13,000 bones were inventories and catalogued, almost 5,000 of which were sampled for DNA testing at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory (AFDIL), Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, Dover Air Force Base, Delaware. Scientific analysis, including DNA testing and skeletal and dental analysis, was utilized to segregate the remains into discrete individuals. |
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Historical Timeline of USS Oklahoma's Missing Personnel and Unknown Remains
QR Guide
USS Oklahoma Project |
Underwater Recovery |
Oklahoma at sea |
Pearl Harbor Attack |
Salvage Operations |
A Hero Returns |
Dr. Mildred Trotter |
Graves Company |
The 80th anniversary of the Attack on Pearl Harbor |