WASHINGTON – The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced Thursday that Navy Radioman 3rd Class Earl M. Ellis, 23, of Hope, Ark. killed during World War II, was accounted for
Agency wants to disinter 94 âunknownâ remains from Punchbowl and entomb them in USS Arizona
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HONOLULU (Tribune News Service) â The Defense POW /MIA Accounting Agency said it has talked with the Navy about disinterring 94 sailors from the famed battleship USS Arizona who are buried as unknowns at Punchbowl cemetery in Honolulu.
But not for identification and potential return to families, as is the usual case, and has been done with hundreds of other unknowns at Punchbowl â officially named the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
The accounting agency disinterred 388 from the USS Oklahoma in 2015. It has exhumed casualties from the USS West Virginia and USS California and the 1943 Battle of Tarawa and hundreds from the Korean War for identification.
The Defense Department expects by year’s end to have identified 90% of the exhumed remains of 388 sailors and Marines who died aboard the USS Oklahoma during the 1941 surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
As part of Project USS Oklahoma, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency was given permission in 2015 to dig up the bodies and have the bones tested along with DNA.