Department of Defense announces ‘unknown’ men of USS Oklahoma attack to be exhumed for DNA analysis

IN THE height of the War in the Pacific, one man boarded a battleship. Minutes later, he would be faced with a terrifying event that would rewrite the course of history.

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ON THE morning of December 7, 1941, Second Lieutenant William G Muller Jr had just returned aboard the USS Oklahoma, which was moored on “Battleship Row” in the middle of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

It was the height of World War II in the Pacific. Unbeknown to Muller, just 10 minutes later he would be faced with a terrifying event that would rewrite the course of history — and take the lives of nearly 500 men.

A few minutes before 8 o’clock on that fateful morning, the crew felt something hit the ship. Most didn’t think much of it.

“I had just reached the third deck. The explosion came from the vicinity of the Wardroom and was not a violent one,” Muller recalled.

But it was violent. It was a torpedo — and the ship, along with the entire harbour, was under a surprise attack by the Japanese.

The word came over the loud speaker system: “Air attack, all unengaged personnel seek cover, these are real Japanese bombers.”

“I could hardly believe that this was a real attack but the excitement and reality of the voice convinced me to move,” Muller recalled.

Then, a second torpedo hit.

“This explosion caused violent repercussions and the whole ship seemed to tremble. I figured the hit was almost adjacent to where I was standing,” Muller said.

Before Muller could even blink, chaos ensued. Water began to flood into the third deck, the lights went out and the ship began to list. This was the beginning of the end for the USS Oklahoma. Men had just seconds to escape: “Only a few of us were able to reach a hatchway in time.”

Two more torpedos struck again. The ship was sinking, and quickly.

Oil began to pour into the ship, and after seven minutes, men were knee deep in the toxic substance. Bunks and bedding were all over the deck at all angles and in everyone’s way. The ladder to the second deck was bent and twisted, obstructing survival. The lights went out after about the fourth hit.

The oil fumes made the men faint, dropping in numbers aboard deck. Another survivor recounted: “When I stooped over, I got dizzy and fell. I seemed to be paralysed from the waist down, had great difficulty breathing, but had enough strength in my arms to drag myself to the ladder and up a couple of steps before collapsing completely.”

By this time the decks were too slippery and steep to walk on. “I worked my way to starboard by use of dogs and fittings on the bulkhead. During this time I heard the last two explosions,” Muller said.

“With difficulty I made the starboard side and climbed into my room, which I knew had an open port. The porthole was almost overhead and I climbed through it, slid down the side and jumped into the water.”

Survivors pulled men out of the raging water, struggling to maintain a grip with the slippery oil. Men with undershirts could be pulled into boats by grabbing the shoulder piece and sleeve of an undershirt.

Reports range on the number of torpedos that hit the USS Oklahoma, ending her 27-year reign on the high seas. She sunk in 12 minutes with a total of 429 crew on board, many trapped within the capsized hull in Battleship Row.

All in all, the Japanese used dive bombers, fighter bombers and torpedo planes to sink nine American ships, including five battleships, and severely damage 21 ships.

Muller’s story is one of luck and perseverance, but others weren’t so fortunate.

Fireman Third Class Edwin C Hopkins was a grain dealer in New Hampshire before enlisting in the US Navy on December 31, 1940. He was just 19 when he became a qualified fireman and assigned to the Oklahoma on September 11, 1941, which had been based in Pearl Harbor since 1937.

It’s not known what exactly happened to Hopkins that day, only that he never came home.

“Growing up with that [grief] was always the white elephant in the room, so to speak,” Tom Gray, second cousin to Hopkins, told the Sentinel Source.

“In any case, when Eddie didn’t show up, his mother could not accept it. She thought he had amnesia. She thought that he was going to come home some day, but he never did.

“It was kind of very tragic, this whole thing.”

For more than seven decades, the remains of those fallen veterans have remained in Hawaii, “entangled in a complex mass of commingled remains, red tape, military secrets and eventually a standoff between the Pentagon and families of the servicemen,” the Sentinel Source wrote.

Hopkins is one of a tiny few of the fallen whose whereabouts are actually known — he’s buried in Section P at The National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii after being positively identified in 1949 through dental records.

Just 35 of the 429 sailors who perished aboard the Oklahoma were identified in the years after the attack. Tragically, the remains of 388 sailors were buried in 61 caskets and labelled as “unknowns” in 45 graves at Hawaii’s National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

Finally, 74 years later, the US government is finally doing something about it. In April this year, the Department of Defense announced a policy change that meant the “unknown” men, would finally become known — by exhuming the remains for DNA analysis.

The goal, the department said, was to return the remains back to their families.

“Analysis of all available evidence indicates that most Oklahoma crew members could be identified individually if the caskets associated with the ship were disinterred (exhumed),” Deputy Defense Secretary Robert O Work said in a statement in April.

“I thereby direct [the Defense Department] to co-ordinate with the Department of Veterans Affairs for the disinterment and individual identification, to the extent practical, of all unknown associated with the Oklahoma in the next five years.”

Relatives of 85 per cent of the battleship’s crew supplied DNA and family records to aid the identification of the remains and the hope, as a spokesperson for the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency told news.com.au, is that within five years, 80 per cent will be officially identified.

“It’ll take some time obviously. Co-mingled remains of so many in 61 caskets will take some time. I think we have a very strong probability of identifying certainly the majority of them,” said Michael Linnington, director of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

“If they don’t have good dental records, we’re relying on surviving family members to supply DNA. Some don’t have family that has ever donated.”

In June, the caskets containing the remains of the 388 fallen soldiers were exhumed, or “disinterred”.

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The remains could take five years of DNA and forensic work to solve the identity, but for those who lost a love one in Pearl Harbor are one step closer to peace.

“This is called a Dignified Transfer. It’s very personal to those of us who work here at Punchbowl,” cemetery public affairs specialist Gene Maestas told Hawaii Now.

On Monday, officials exhumed the last four of 61 caskets containing the “Oklahoma unknowns”. So far, the military has identified the remains of seven crew members missing since the sinking.

The military will release the servicemen’s names once their families have been notified. Families will be given the option of receiving the remains as they are identified, or waiting until more pieces of a body or even a complete skeleton become available.

“The Oklahoma I believe is just as interesting a story but it’s been overshadowed all these years,” Parks Stephenson, who produced the documentary Killer Subs In Pearl Harbor told news.com.au.

“When Michael Bay did his Pearl Harbor movie, he gave the Oklahoma storyline some emphasis that’s never been given before, he spent a little more screen time on the Oklahoma capsizing. I thought that was interesting and appropriate. I really see the Oklahoma as being really the last fertile ground for new information about the attack out there; I think we know almost the rest of the history of the attack.”

Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency told news.com.au more than 73,000 American bodies from World War II remain unidentified.

“Our mission is to bring them home, it’s our goal to identify them all.”

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