The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency is working to recover and identify the remains of the crew of the World War II battleship, USS Oklahoma, which sank during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
Video by Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Taylor Stinson
Transcript
Dr. Laurel Freas: It’s really important, you know, there’s a promise that, that we make as a nation to our service members, and that they make to one another, that no one will be left behind; no one will be forgotten; and this is how the nation executes that promise. This is how we go about fulfilling that.
Dr. Paul Emanovsky: One of the main differences of what people expect to happen when they see it on TV or in the movies versus the reality of working in a human identification lab or a crime lab is that DNA results don’t come back within that 30 minute episode. It takes oftentimes much longer for any of the analytical tests that we do to yield a result that we can use in the laboratory. The USS Oklahoma project was one of the main first projects that we’ve had to do as a concerted effort for a project, and we just recently hit the 200th ID milestone this past, this past week or a couple weeks ago.
Dr. Laurel Freas: The whole reason that we were able to do these disinterment projects is that now with the science and the technology that we have, we can make an argument that these remains that have been unidentified and unidentifiable for over 70 years now we have the capability to identify them. So the Oklahoma, you know, was sort of the pathfinder, the way forward that showed we can be successful doing this. And so based on their success, we made the argument to disinter the West Virginia and the California. So the expectations are identical that we will be able to identify all or nearly all of the individuals from those two ships that are still unidentified.
Dr. Paul Emanovsky: The amount of effort that goes into recovering these remains and to making identifications is oftentimes a lot of hard research and analysis prior to even getting to go on an investigation or a recovery or an exhumation if it was a disinterment. And then once the remains are accessioned into the laboratory, be it from field work or from exhumations from cemeteries, there’s just a large amount of information that we have to take in and analytical tests to perform that all kind of coalesce to become a picture of an individual identification.
Dr. Laurel Freas: I’m always surprised to hear that folks aren’t aware that we’re doing this, so it’s really important to me to be able to spread that word so that people do know this is something that’s ongoing and even if it takes 75 years or longer, we’re not going to give up we’re going to keep trying.