The US federal government is set to begin the process of disinterring the remains of unidentified crewmembers of the USS Arizona, nearly 85 years after they were killed in the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that plunged the United States into World War II. 

More than 2,400 Americans were killed in the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941, including 1,177 crewmembers of the USS Arizona. Of the men pulled from the wreckage of the Arizona, many were burned beyond recognition, and their bodies were buried in nearby cemeteries as unknowns. In 1947, 170 of these unknown servicemembers were exhumed and over 100 identified, but dozens of crew members were declared “unrecoverable.” Those men were reburied at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. 

One of the men who perished aboard the Arizona was Gunner’s Mate Second Class Robert Edwin Kline. In 2023, his grandnephew, Kevin Kline, founded Operation 85, a privately funded, civilian-led organization aimed at identifying the remaining unknowns.

Kline’s project hopes to achieve the same success as Project Oklahoma, which was launched by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) in 2015 to identify unknowns who perished on the USS Oklahoma during the attack on Pearl Harbor. More than 360 previously unaccounted-for crewmen were individually identified through that project.

DPAA guidelines stipulate that servicemembers may only be disinterred if it is more than likely than not that they will be positively identified. For the case of group disinterments such as the Arizona unknowns, they need to have DNA family reference samples of 60 percent of the fallen servicemembers.

On April 23, 2026, the DPAA announced that it had met the 60 percent threshold for the USS Arizona Unknown Identification Project.

“Reaching this 60 percent threshold allows DPAA to formally request and begin planning the disinterment of potentially 141 unknowns currently buried in multiple potentially comingled graves at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu,” the agency said in a statement announcing the milestone.

The DPAA said the official start date of the disinterment effort will be announced at a later date once it has been approved by the Department of Defense. The DPAA said that it is still seeking additional DNA samples from families who had relatives who served aboard the USS Arizona or were involved in the attack at Pearl Harbor. If you or anyone you know is related to a fallen crew member of the Arizona, you can help return these men to their families by getting in touch with Operation 85 here or the DPAA here.