Identifying Unknown Soldiers | Ghosts of Pearl Harbor

of the 429 men who died on the
battleship USS Oklahoma only 35 were
identified in the years immediately
following the attack the rest were
buried in graves marked unknown but
almost 75 years later one of these
unknown men was given a name
my brother’s the oldest so he got the
phone call and he called me and couldn’t
get words that couldn’t speak and I knew
it was something important and I thought
something happened to somebody I said
just spit it out just tell me and then
he said uncle heads been identified
there is no statute of limitations on
honoring anyone who died for their
country the oil that shrouded Pearl
Harbor after the attack became crucial
in identifying unknown remains the few
oil has acted as a preservative for the
DNA and these bones and we’ve been able
to get very high-quality DNA from these
skeletal remains which has actually
worked in our favor if we have the right
family reference samples we can
successfully identify all of the
unknowns that we currently have
recovered people often ask is the
Unknown Soldier a thing of the past and
the answer to that is yes I think it’s
important to account for for an
individual to bring that individual home
and to give them a name it’s one of my
moral and ethical imperatives that no
one should be buried without a name on
October 15 2016 Fay Hopkins Bohr was
finally able to lay her uncle to rest in
his hometown