The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced this week eight sailors killed at Pearl Harbor on the USS Oklahoma had been accounted for.
The sailors were: Navy Seaman 1st Class Russell C. Roach, 22, of Zanesville, Ohio; Navy Patternmaker 1st Class Stanislaw F. Drwall, 25, of Thomas, West Virginia; Navy Seaman 2nd Class Floyd D. Helton, 18, of Somerset, Kentucky; Navy Seaman 2nd Class Raymond D. Boynton, 19, of Grandville, Michigan; Navy Seaman 2nd Class Russell O. Ufford, 17, of Kansas City, Missouri; Navy Chief Water Tender Claude White, 40; Navy Fireman 1st Class Walter S. Belt, Jr., 25; and Navy Seaman 1st Class David F. Tidball, 20.
On Dec. 7, 1941, these men were assigned to the battleship USS Oklahoma, which was moored at Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, when the ship was attacked by Japanese aircraft. The USS Oklahoma sustained multiple torpedo hits, which caused it to quickly capsize. The attack on the ship resulted in the deaths of 429 crewmen.
From December 1941 to June 1944, Navy personnel recovered the remains of the deceased crew, which were subsequently interred in the Halawa and Nu’uanu Cemeteries.
In September 1947, tasked with recovering and identifying fallen U.S. personnel in the Pacific Theater, members of the American Graves Registration Service (AGRS) disinterred the remains of U.S. casualties from the two cemeteries and transferred them to the Central Identification Laboratory at Schofield Barracks.
The laboratory staff was only able to confirm the identifications of 35 men from the USS Oklahoma at that time. The AGRS subsequently buried the unidentified remains in 46 plots at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP), known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu. In October 1949, a military board classified those who could not be identified as non-recoverable.
Between June and November 2015, DPAA personnel exhumed the USS Oklahoma Unknowns from the Punchbowl for analysis.
To identify their remains, scientists from DPAA used dental and anthropological analysis. Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y chromosome DNA (Y-STR) analysis.
These men's names are recorded on the Courts of the Missing at the Punchbowl, along with the others who are missing from WWII. A rosette will be placed next to their names to indicate they have been accounted for.
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Roach will be buried on Aug. 11, 2021, in his Canton, Ohio.
Drwall will be buried on Aug. 5, 2021, in his hometown
Helton will be buried July 31, 2021, in Burnside, Kentucky.
Boynton will be buried on Sept. 8, 2021, at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
Ufford will be buried on July 16, 2021, in Salisbury, North Carolina.
DPAA is grateful to the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of the Navy for their partnership in this mission.
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