Eighty years to the day after a brutal attack from the sky cut short their lives, the sailors of the USS Oklahoma may now, finally, rest in peace.
On Tuesday, the Navy will rebury unidentifiable remains from 429 sailors and Marines killed when as many as eight Japanese torpedoes pulverized the port side of the huge vessel while it lay at anchor on Pearl Harbor’s Battleship Row on Dec. 7, 1941.
The service marks the close of a six-year project by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency to identify the 394 Oklahoma crew members who could not be identified in the aftermath of the attack — including 21 from Nebraska and western Iowa.
The re-interment ceremony will return a casket containing bones too small for identification to an empty grave at the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, also known as the Punchbowl.
People are also reading…
The Oklahoma Project, led by anthropologists at the agency’s Offutt Air Force Base laboratory and aided by DNA analysts in Dover, Delaware, resulted in the identification of 361 crew men.
“We are done making IDs,” said Carrie LeGarde, an Offutt-based forensic anthropologist who leads the project. “We have done everything we can, at this point, with what we have.”
Three other caskets containing larger bones were buried last week. The Navy has separated them in the hope that they could be linked in the future to some of the 33 Oklahoma sailors who remain unidentified — perhaps through future advances in DNA technology, or if new DNA samples are obtained from families of USS Oklahoma casualties.
“We know what caskets they have gone into,” LeGarde said. “They could be accessed in the future if needed.”
Two of the still-unidentified Oklahoma sailors are from Nebraska: Lloyd McLaughlin of Bancroft and William Sellon of Randolph. A third, Jimmie Henrichsen, was born in Sioux City, Iowa, but was adopted and raised in Rapid City, South Dakota.
But the close of the Oklahoma Project is not the end of the effort to give names to the unknowns from Pearl Harbor. The Accounting Agency is continuing its work on identifying 45 sets of remains from battleships USS West Virginia and USS California. Both sank on Battleship Row, killing 209 sailors aboard them.
So far, 12 sailors from the West Virginia and two from the California have been identified, said Laurel Freas, the agency’s Hawaii-based anthropologist in charge of the project.
“We are still confident that we’re going to be able to identify the majority of the remains,” Freas said last week.
On the 80-year anniversary of what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called “a date which will live in infamy,” officials from the Navy, the Accounting Agency and USS Oklahoma families are focused on an identification project that surpassed goals set when it began six years ago. It was the biggest and most complex mass identification in the history of the agency and its predecessor organizations and the first large project for the Offutt lab, which opened in 2013.
“This is a momentous occasion,” its director, Kelly McKeague, said. “To state that it’s a milestone in the history of the Department of Defense is not an overstatement.”
LeGarde and two other Offutt anthropologists are in Hawaii for the Oklahoma ceremony, which is being limited to family members and invited guests. Separate Pearl Harbor ceremonies are being held at the USS Arizona Memorial and the USS Oklahoma Memorial.
The ceremony is being livestreamed on a military public affairs website, dvidshub.net/webcast/27648.
Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro will speak at the service. About 80 family members will attend, said Capt. Robert McMahon, director of the Navy Casualty Office.
Also attending is David Russell, 101, of Albany, Oregon, who survived the sinking 80 years ago by scrambling over the hull of his capsized ship and jumping to a rope dangling from the deck of the USS Maryland, moored adjacent to the Oklahoma. Russell’s brother-in-law, Walter Rogers, died on the Oklahoma and was identified in 2017.
In most cases, the families of the Oklahoma's dead crew members had given up decades ago on recovering the remains of their loved ones. The bones were soaked with oil and entombed in mud until the ship was raised and refloated in 1943. The remains were buried in two Honolulu cemeteries.
In 1947, the military disinterred and tried to identify them but had little success because of the limited forensic tools available at the time.
They were reburied in 1950, with only 35 crew members identified. Six more were identified in the mid-2000s through the efforts of Ray Emory, a Pearl Harbor survivor whose detective work and advocacy paved the way for the Oklahoma Project.
In 2015, DPAA disinterred the 61 caskets containing USS Oklahoma remains and shipped them to the new Offutt lab, which had plenty of space to examine the remains.
Over the next several years, LeGarde, Carrie Brown and other anthropologists catalogued and measured about 13,000 bones and took DNA samples from about 5,000.
Those samples were sent to the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in Dover, Delaware, where they were matched against DNA samples obtained from family members of almost all the USS Oklahoma missing.
When the project started, the Accounting Agency set a goal of identifying 80% of the 388 Oklahoma crew members then unidentified. They reached 92%.
“The Oklahoma is sort of the shooting star for DNA success,” Freas said.
Timothy McMahon, director of DNA operations for the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, said DNA degrades over time and can be difficult to obtain from samples as old as those from Pearl Harbor.
“Anything that’s been in the environment for 80-plus years is degraded,” he said. “It’s basically the time and environment that present the greatest challenges.”
But the DNA lab has successfully sequenced DNA from 96% of the bone samples, in part because of the tragic way the crew members’ remains were entombed.
“The oil seeped into (the bones) and prevented damage,” McMahon said.
That didn’t happen with the West Virginia and California casualties, whose remains were recovered more quickly. Freas said that is part of the reason why identifications from those ships have been slower.
“We’re using all the analytical tools in our arsenal to identify remains that belong together,” she said.
LeGarde said she has developed a strong connection to the men she has spent years identifying.
“It’s really emotional right now,” she said. “It’s an important part of our job to have that emotional connection, and to make contact with them.”
It seems a little surreal that the identification project that has dominated her life for the past six years is coming to a close.
“It’s closure for myself, too,” LeGarde said. “After Dec. 7, it will set in that it’s over. I know I’m going to cry my eyes out.”
The Oklahoma identifications have now wrapped up, but the burials are expected to continue for some time. Five burials are taking place this week. That includes services Saturday in California for Fireman 1st Class Denis Hiskett, 20, of Nebraska City, whose remains were identified in early 2021.
Hiskett will be buried near his parents at San Fernando Mission Cemetery in suburban Los Angeles. Much of his family moved to California in the 1950s, said Tom Hiskett, 78, his nephew and oldest living relative.
Details are sketchy about Hiskett’s early life because his surviving relatives said little about him, Tom Hiskett said.
“I made the mistake of bringing Denis up once at a family reunion,” he said. “They just didn’t want to talk about him.”
Denis Hiskett was born in Oklahoma. At some point during his childhood, his family (he had at least three brothers) moved to Nebraska City.
He was a good athlete and played high school football, said grandnephew J.D. Hiskett, 57, of Firestone, Colorado.
But he dropped out and enlisted in the Navy in the spring of 1940. Fatefully, he was assigned to the USS Oklahoma.
“He was at the wrong place at the wrong time and lost his life,” J.D. Hiskett said.
Several years ago, J.D.’s father, Jerry, and other relatives were contacted about providing a DNA sample in hopes of identifying Denis.
“It was out of the blue,” J.D. Hiskett said. “They were kind of surprised, I guess.”
He said a large contingent of family members are attending Saturday’s funeral. As a 20-year Marine Corps veteran, it means a lot to him that the Navy and the Accounting Agency are working to bring missing service members home.
“It’s so important for these lost souls,” he said. “I am so grateful for so many people I’ve never met. If I could shake their hand, buy them a drink, take them out for coffee, I’d do it.”
50 historical photos of the attack on Pearl Harbor

Three U.S. battleships are hit from the air during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Japan's bombing of U.S. military bases at Pearl Harbor brings the U.S. into World War II. From left are: USS West Virginia, severely damaged; USS Tennessee, damaged; and USS Arizona, sunk. (AP Photo)

The battleship USS California is afire and listing to port in the Japanese aerial attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941 during World War II. (AP Photo)

FILE - In this Dec. 7, 1941 file photo, a Japanese plane goes into its last dive as it heads toward the ground in flames after it was hit by Naval anti-aircraft fire during a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. (AP Photo)

In this aerial photo provided by the U.S. Navy, smoke from the burning battleship Arizona spreads a pall over Pearl Harbor naval base, Dec. 7, 1941, as a Japanese plane dodged through anti-aircraft fire to drive home the Japanese attack that launched a war on the U.S. (AP Photo/U.S. Navy)

Flaming oil throws a billow of smoke skyward in the Japanese attack on Hickam Field, Pearl Harbor, U.S. Air base near Honolulu, Dec. 7, 1941. (AP Photo)

The USS Arizona is in flames in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

Torpedoed and bombed by the Japanese, the battleship USS West Virginia begins to sink after suffering heavy damage, center, while the USS Maryland, left, is still afloat in Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii, Dec. 7, 1941 during World War II. The capsized USS Oklahoma is at right. (AP Photo/U.S. Navy)

Firemen and civilians rush to the scene with fire hoses to save homes and stores in the Japanese and Chinese sections of Honolulu, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941. As Japanese aviators rained bombs on Pearl Harbor, starting war in the Pacific, offshore properties are also wrecked and burned. (AP Photo)

Youths inspect the wreckage of a Japanese bomber, Dec. 17, 1941 brought down by a United States P-40 plane during the Dec 7, 1941 attack on Oahu, Hawaii. (AP Photo)

Students of the Lunalilo High School in the Waikiki district of Honolulu watch their school burn after the roof of the main building, at center, is hit by a bomb during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941. (AP Photo)

This is one of the first pictures of the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941. A P-40 plane which was machine-gunned while on the ground. (AP Photo)

Rider Joy Cummings examines a Japanese cherry tree that was cut down with the words "To hell with those Japanese," carved into it, Dec. 10, 1941. Irving C. Root, Parks Commissioner, termed it vandalism. In the background is the recently completed Jefferson Memorial. (AP Photo)

In this photo provided by the U.S. Army Signal Corps, wreckage of a U.S. Army pursuit ship is seen after the surprise attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Dec. 7, 1941. (AP Photo/U.S. Army Signal Corps)

Ruth Lee, hostess at a Miami Chinese restaurant, seen Dec. 15, 1941, doesn't want to be mistaken for Japanese when she sunbathes on her days off, and brings along a Chinese flag. Miss Lee is actually American-born. (AP Photo)

FILE - In this Dec. 7, 1941 file photo, smoke rises from the battleship USS Arizona as it sinks during a Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. (AP File Photo)

FILE - In this Dec. 7, 1941 photo made available by the U.S. Navy, a small boat rescues a seaman from the USS West Virginia burning in the foreground in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, after Japanese aircraft attacked the military installation. (U.S. Navy via AP, File)

FILE - American ships burn during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in this Dec. 7, 1941 file photo. (AP Photo, File)

Half a house was left of this resident of the Asian section of Honolulu in Japan's surprise bombing which wreaked havoc in nearby Pearl Harbor. Native and Japanese cyclists watch fireman pour water on wreckage on Dec. 7, 1941. (AP Photo)

In this photo provided by the Department of Defense, U.S. aircraft destroyed as a result of the Japanese bombing on Pearl Harbor is shown, Dec. 7, 1941. Heap of demolished hanger in background Army amphibian in foreground. (AP Photo/DOD)

A bombed U.S. Army truck with wheel still ablaze after the surprise attack, Dec. 7, 1941, which touched off a new war in the Pacific. (AP Photo)

U.S. Army barracks burning after the surprise attack at Hickam Field, Hawaii, Dec. 7, 1941. (AP Photo)

A Japanese plane, braving American anti-aircraft fire, proceeds toward “battleship row,” Pearl Harbor, after other bombers had hit USS. Arizona, from which smoke billows, Dec. 7, 1941. (AP Photo)

An unidentified officers' wife, investigating explosion and seeing smoke pall in distance at 8:15 am Dec. 7, 1941, heard neighbor Mary Naiden, then an army hostess, exclaim “There are red circles on those planes overhead. They are Japanese!" A boy and a woman carrying a dog flee toward quarters. (AP Photo/Mary Naiden)

The wreckage of the U.S.S. Oklahoma as it lies in the mud at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii after the Japanese aerial attack on Dec. 7, 1941. (AP Photo)

In this image provided by the U.S. Navy, general view of the burning and damaged ships of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, during the Japanese aerial attack on Dec. 7, 1941. (AP Photo/U.S. Navy)

The Lunalilo High School situated near the Waikiki district which was almost totally destroyed by fire from a bomb which hit the roof at the center part of the main building on Dec. 7, 1941. Four fire companies fought to save the school. Several homes all around the school caught fire - but were saved by the fire fighters. All families for blocks around brought their personal belongings outside of their homes, fearing another attack. (AP Photo)

The pilot of this Japanese plane met flaming death in the first surprise attack on the principal Hawaiian island of Oahu on Dec. 7, 1941, when his plane was shot down, rammed a residence and set the house and the one adjoining on fire. In the foreground is part of the plane wreckage. The pilot, later established as being at least six feet tall, was cremated. Japanese families resided in the two houses, which were destroyed. (AP Photo)

Battleship Arizona at pearl Harbor, December 1941. The photo was taken shortly after the battleship was bombed and destroyed during the surprise attack by Japanese forces, December 7, 1941. The vessel at right is a rescue tug. Flag still flying the ship is resting on the bottom of the ocean with decks flooded. (AP Photo)

Two ships are seen burning after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941 during World War II. (AP Photo)

Heavy black smoke billows as oil fuel burns from shattered tanks on ships that were hit during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941. Visible through the murk is the USS Maryland, center, and the hulk of the capsized USS Oklahoma to its right.

The destroyer USS Shaw explodes after being hit by bombs during the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, December 7, 1941. (AP Photo)

In this image provided by the U.S. Navy, sailors stand among wrecked airplanes at Ford Island Naval Air Station as they watch the explosion of the USS Shaw in the background, during the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. (AP Photo/U.S. Navy)

Rescue workers help evacuate the Lunalilo High School in Honolulu after the roof of the main building was hit by a bomb during the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941. (AP Photo)

Smoke still fogged the air at Pearl harbor, Dec. 7, 1941 as these tractors tugged at what the Navy said was a Japanese two-man submarine, not shown, pulling it up on the beach for inspection after it was disabled in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. (AP Photo)

A mass of twisted metal wreckage lay along a Honolulu street after the city had been attacked by Japanese planes Dec. 7, 1941. (AP Photo)

A small crowd inspects the damage, both inside and outside, after a Japanese bomb hit the residence of Paul Goo during the raid on Honolulu Dec. 7, 1941. (AP Photo)

U.S. Navy seamen examine the wreckage of a Japanese torpedo plane shot down at Pearl harbor during the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941. (AP Photo)

Wreckage, identified by the U.S. Navy as a Japanese torpedo plane , was salvaged from the bottom of Pearl Harbor following the surprise attack Dec. 7, 1941. (AP Photo)

The wing of a Japanese bomber shot down on the grounds of the Naval Hospital at Honolulu, Hawaii, Dec. 7, 1941. (AP Photo)

Japanese plane, proceeds toward "Battleship Row" at Pearl Harbor after other bombers had hit USS Arizona, from which smoke billows, Dec. 7, 1941. Photo was taken from the yard of Army's Hickam Field Quarters by Mrs. Mary Naiden of New York City. (AP Photo)

The shattered wreckage of American planes bombed by the Japanese in their attack on Pearl Harbor is strewn on Hickam Field, Dec. 7, 1941. (AP Photo)

The battleship USS Arizona belches smoke as it topples over into the sea during Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, December 7, 1941. The ship sank with more than 80 percent of its 1,500-man crew, including Rear Admiral Issac C. Kidd. The attack, which left 2,343 Americans dead and 916 missing, broke the backbone of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and forced America out of a policy of isolationism. President Franklin D. Roosvelt announced that it was "a date which will live in infamy" and Congress declared war on Japan the morning after. This was the first attack on American territory since 1812. (AP Photo)

Planes are lined up at Hickham Field, Air Corps post on Oahu, Hawaii, in an undated image. Reports said that a Japanese bomb struck the field. Washington made the announcement Dec. 7, 1941. (AP Photo)

Believed to be the first bomb dropped on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in the sneak-attack on Dec. 7, 1941, this picture was found torn to pieces at Yokusuka Base by photographer's mate 2/C Martin J. Shemanski of Plymouth, Pa. One Japanese plane is shown pulling out of a dive near bomb eruption (center) and another the air at upper right. (AP Photo)

In this photo provided by the Department of Defense, a battered American flag flies in the foreground at the military barracks at Hickam Field near Honolulu, during the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941. (AP Photo/DOD)

Japanese family move their household goods out on their lawn, for fear of the fire spreading to their home from a fire caused by a falling bomb only a half block away during the air raid on Oahu, Hawaii on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941. (AP Photo)

Black smoke pours from the U.S. Destroyer USS Shaw after a direct hit by bombs during the surprise aerial attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941. Defenders on the pier at left throw water into the blazing wreckage. (AP Photo/U.S. Navy)

Smoke clouds the sky over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941, as two sailors crouch with rifles on the pier at the submarine base trying to locate an enemy to fire on during World War II. Submarines berthed nearby are USS Tautog and USS Narwhal. (AP Photo)

In this image provided by the U.S. Department of Defense, destroyers in drydock at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii are battered by bombs after Japanese sneak attack on Dec. 7, 1941. Background in dock is battleship Pennsylvania, which suffered only minor damage. Destroyers are Downes, left, and Cassin, right. Machinery and fittings were transferred to new hulls and the destroyers were never stricken from Navy's active list. (AP Photo/U.S. Department of Defense)

An American Seaman looks at the charred corpse of a Japanese flier brought up from the bottom of Pearl Harbor where he crashed with his burning plane during the Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941 in Hawaii. (AP Photo)