Heroes of Pearl Harbor removed from Punchbowl

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency started the day Monday by recovering USS Oklahoma “unknowns” from Punchbowl cemetery, and followed that up by dedicating a new $85 million facility at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.

Both represent new ways of performing the mission of recovering and identifying missing American war dead — duties that in recent years came under congressional scrutiny for being greatly inefficient.

“This is an exciting time for the POW/MIA Accounting Agency,” DPAA Director Michael Linnington told several hundred guests at the new building’s dedication at Hickam. “This facility will enable a cohesive and collaborative workplace to support our reorganization efforts, improve our productivity and help facilitate interaction across multidisciplinary teams.”

In January the former Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii — known as JPAC — was merged with the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office in Washington, D.C., and some functions of the Air Force’s Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory in Ohio, to create the single Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

The Pentagon announced in April, meanwhile, that it was ordering the exhumation of all 388 sailors and Marines from the battleship USS Oklahoma who were buried as “unknowns” at Punchbowl following the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, so they could be identified and returned to families.

The former JPAC sought to disinter the Okla­­homa remains in 2013 to help it meet a benchmark of 200 annual identifications. The exhumations began in June.

Research by Pearl Harbor survivor Ray Emory led to the 2003 disinterment of a single USS Oklahoma casket with heavily commingled remains. The remains of five crew members were identified and sent home to families. But incomplete sets of bones of more than 100 men were also were found, complicating further identifications.

With 84 percent of family DNA reference samples and 90 percent of dental records available, the military command can now identify crew members who were unidentifiable three-quarters of a century ago.

Ten caskets already had been removed, followed by five more Monday, according to Punchbowl cemetery. Six white-gloved service members saluted and carried each American flag-draped casket to trucks waiting to take the remains to DPAA’s older lab at Hickam.

After being worked on some in Hawaii, the remains will be shipped to a DPAA satellite lab in Nebraska for DNA testing and further identification.

“We’re on pace. I think we’ll be done with the disinterments in October,” Linnington said. “Obviously, the work has already started, but the hard work will continue over the next couple years to do the full accounting of all 388 sailors and Marines.”

At Hickam the new 136,000-square-foot office and lab building was dedicated as the Sen. Daniel K. Inouye Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency Center of Excellence.

Former Inouye Chief of Staff Jennifer Sabas told those gathered that the MIA mission, “the most earnest of obligations — to leave no warrior behind, no matter the place, no matter how much time or effort it takes — was etched into (Inouye’s) very being.”

Inouye, who died in 2012, received the Medal of Honor for his bravery in World War II.

There were dueling opinions as to whether the new facility should be in Hawaii or on the East Coast, but Inouye prevailed with Hawaii, Sabas said.

The new agency has not been without growing pains. In calendar year 2014, 107 identifications were made, but in 2015 that number stands at just 12, with the expectation the pace will quickly pick up, DPAA officials said.

On the third floor of the new Inouye DPAA facility, about 50,000 square feet of lab and analytical space doubles the older lab’s capacity. That includes 80 to 100 tables to lay out remains, said lab director John Byrd.

Command staff, the personnel office and the IT section are among groups that have already moved into the new building, with the lab expected to move in August, DPAA said.

Byrd said other large identification projects similar to that of the USS Oklahoma crew will be pursued by DPAA over the next few years “now that we have this facility that’s up to the task.”