Pentagon official visits USS Oklahoma ‘unknowns’

Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Christine Wor­muth visited Punchbowl cemetery Sunday as the Pentagon considers whether to exhume the bodies of nearly 400 crew members of the USS Okla­homa buried as "unknowns."

Many families of the Dec. 7, 1941, casualties want their relatives identified, and the Defense Department now has the scientific capability to make a majority of those identifications.

Wormuth "wanted to get a sense of" the unknowns at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, the formal name of Punchbowl cemetery, said Navy Rear Adm. Michael Franken, interim director of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

Franken, based out of Washington, D.C., also visited Punchbowl.

"Obviously, it’s a prologue to what we anticipate will be a yea-or-nay disinterment decision that Deputy Secretary of Defense (Robert) Work will make shortly," Franken said. A decision is expected within two weeks.

Officials with DPAA, tasked with investigating, recovering and identifying missing American war dead, recently used words such as "favorable" and "optimistic" to describe the expected outcome of the Okla­­homa exhumation review involving about 388 crew members.

Franken said "significant emotion" is involved with family members.

Some believe the Okla­homa crew members should remain with fallen shipmates in the commingled graves marked with the ship’s name and the word "unknown."

Franken said he’s heard that argument at the Pentagon. He has turned the question around to ask if that person had an uncle or other relative buried as an unknown, would he or she want the deceased family member to remain that way or instead be buried according to the wishes of a spouse?

"And they say, ‘Yeah, I understand,’" Franken said Monday while in Hawaii.

The former Hawaii-based Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, which was merged with two other government organizations to create DPAA, has advocated for the disinterment of the Okla­homa crew members and other World War II unknowns at Punchbowl.

DPAA has a budget of more than $100 million and sends teams to remote locations around the world seeking the recovery of Americans missing from past wars. The Punchbowl unknowns are seen as a less costly way of boosting the annual number of identifications — which Congress has mandated.

In fiscal 2014, JPAC made 87 identifications, according to an internal report.

On Jan. 9 the Pentagon announced that Franken would serve as interim director of the new agency; Air Force Maj. Gen. Kelly Mc­Keague, who was JPAC’s commander, was tapped as interim deputy director.

The Defense Department recently advertised for a civilian head of DPAA to be paid up to $183,300.

Before stopping in Hawaii, Franken visited Thailand and two excavation sites in Vietnam where the remains of a Marine and four soldiers are being sought, he said. DPAA has about 470 people at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam and is bringing in others, he said.

Franken said the reorganization of the Pentagon’s accounting effort has been difficult but is going well.

"The organization is on the ascendancy. It’s challenging (but) that’s a good thing," he said.

Among his goals is the startup of a Web-based data-sharing information system that will include case histories of the missing from old typewritten reports to oral histories, maps and photos.

The information would be available to families, nongovernmental organizations and service members who were there, with submitted information vetted by DPAA staff.

"Think Wikipedia," Franken said.

Franken predicted the data-sharing system will be tested before he is scheduled to leave this summer.