MIA lab, Navy at odds over exhuming unknown USS Oklahoma casualties

MIA lab, Navy at odds over exhuming unknown USS Oklahoma casualties
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser
By William Cole
Published: August 12, 2013

HONOLULU — The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command wants to take the unprecedented step of exhuming all of the Dec. 7, 1941, casualties of the USS Oklahoma buried as "unknowns" at Punchbowl cemetery — more than 330 crew members — to help it reach a higher number of annual identifications mandated by Congress.

But the Hawaii-based military command, known as JPAC, is getting resistance from the Navy, which prefers to maintain the "sanctity" of the graves at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, officials said.

Further, the Navy would like to take the partial and commingled remains of more than 100 Oklahoma crew members who were disinterred in 2003 from a single casket at Punchbowl, possibly re­bury them at a memorial and grave site to be created on Ford Island, and invite family members to an interment ceremony on Dec. 7, 2014.
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