The Repository Last Known Position

USS Arizona's Unknowns: How 12 DNA Samples Became 643

October 18, 2026 · Runtime 12:32 · Watch on YouTube

On 7 December 1941 a bomb reached the forward magazine of the battleship USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, and 1,177 of the 1,512 men aboard died. More than 900 are still inside the hull, which stays shut as a memorial. But some of the dead were brought out, could not be named, and have been buried as Unknowns in the Punchbowl cemetery in Honolulu since the late 1940s. In 2021 the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency held family DNA samples for 12 of the 1,177 men. On 7 December 2026, it plans to begin bringing the Arizona's Unknowns up.

Chapters

  1. 0:00 Pearl Harbor, 1941
  2. 0:35 The ones who came out
  3. 1:31 Two days of fire
  4. 2:04 The salvage: 105 named
  5. 2:28 The ship as a tomb
  6. 2:59 The oil and the ashes
  7. 3:53 Halawa, Nuuanu, Schofield
  8. 4:22 76 graves in the Punchbowl
  9. 5:10 85, 88, 141 or 86?
  10. 5:48 A rule written for the Oklahoma
  11. 7:06 Twelve families
  12. 7:33 "False hope"
  13. 7:56 Operation 85
  14. 8:37 The threshold is met
  15. 9:05 Casket X-97
  16. 9:55 7 December 2026
  17. 11:17 Eight at a time
  18. 11:37 The account

Transcript

Pearl Harbor, 1941 0:00

Pearl Harbor, the morning of the seventh of December, 1941, filmed by the Navy. On the battleship Arizona, the air raid alarm went off at about five minutes to eight.

A bomb glanced off the face of the second gun turret, went through the deck, and exploded in the black powder magazine. The magazines beside it went up with it.

Of the 1,512 men on board, 1,177 died. That is about half of all the Americans killed at Pearl Harbor that day.

The ones who came out 0:35

More than nine hundred of them are still inside the hull. But not all of them. Some were brought out, could not be named, and were buried as Unknowns in a cemetery above Honolulu.

On the seventh of December 2026, eighty-five years to the day, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency plans to start bringing them up. This is how a case closed in 1947 gets opened again: a policy written for another ship, a threshold, and the families who reached it.

A word on what you are seeing. The film from 1941 and 1942 is the Navy's own, from the National Archives. The cemetery footage is the agency's disinterment of a different group of Pearl Harbor unknowns, from the West Loch disaster, in 2024. The Arizona work had not begun when this was made. No human remains are shown.

Two days of fire 1:31

The Arizona burned for two days. The agency's own history of the ship says most of the men who died aboard probably died instantly, in the explosion.

Within a week, Navy divers surveyed the wreck to see what could be salvaged. Their report did not mention recovering anyone. Most of the dead, the agency wrote, had been effectively cremated by the explosion and the fire.

The divers also found that the blast had collapsed bulkheads and sealed the exits. The men below were trapped inside.

The salvage: 105 named 2:04

In May 1942, the Navy began cutting away what still stood above the water. The guns came off. Shells and powder came out of the magazines aft.

From the wreck and the harbor, the Navy recovered the remains of 105 crewmen who could be identified. The last salvage work on the Arizona ended in October 1943.

The ship as a tomb 2:28

The rest of the ship was left as it lay. The wreckage, the agency wrote, was to remain untouched, as a memorial to the men who lost their lives.

In March 1950, Admiral Arthur Radford ordered the colors raised over the wreck. In 1962, the white memorial that now spans the hull was dedicated.

Inside it, the names of the men who died aboard are cut into a marble wall. The wall does not say which of them came out of the ship.

The oil and the ashes 2:59

And the ship still leaks. The National Park Service estimates that half a million gallons of fuel oil remain inside the stern. Woods Hole put it at six hundred thousand in 2025, and said it is not leaking at a highly concerning rate. On the surface above it, the oil spreads into thin, colored sheets.

There is one more way into the hull. Since 1982, survivors of the Arizona have been allowed to have their ashes placed inside, by divers, in the well of the fourth turret. The Park Service list holds forty-six names.

The last living survivor of the Arizona, Lou Conter, died on the first of April 2024. He was 102.

That is the hull, and it stays shut. This episode is about the others: the men who came out of the ship, and were buried without names.

Halawa, Nuuanu, Schofield 3:53

In 1941 and 1942, the dead recovered at Pearl Harbor were buried in two naval cemeteries on Oahu, Halawa and Nuuanu. Remains recovered from the Arizona in the salvage went there too.

In September 1947, the Army's Graves Registration Service dug up about 170 sets of remains tentatively associated with the Arizona. It sent them to its laboratory at Schofield Barracks.

76 graves in the Punchbowl 4:22

The ones it could not identify were declared non-recoverable. They were buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, the Punchbowl, in 76 grave sites, as Unknowns.

For decades, those stones carried only a number and a date. Then Congress ordered more. In August 2001, over seventy markers were replaced with stones that also said USS Arizona, and Pearl Harbor.

In January 2001, the Army's identification laboratory dug up remains it believed were those of Seaman Second Class William Goodwin, of the Arizona. In 2021, the agency said one presumed Arizona crewman, exhumed about twenty years earlier, was still in its laboratory, without a name.

85, 88, 141 or 86? 5:10

So how many men are in those graves? Here, the record does not agree with itself.

In 2021, the agency's working figure was about eighty-five. In March 2026, it said eighty-eight. Its own release in April said potentially 141, because some graves may hold more than one man, mixed together. By October, its spokesman said eighty-six.

This episode uses eighty-six, the agency's latest. And the same reporting counts fifty-five more Pearl Harbor unknowns with no ship identified at all.

A rule written for the Oklahoma 5:48

The rule that can open a grave like this was written for another ship. On the fourteenth of April 2015, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Robert Work, signed a memo that sent the USS Oklahoma's unknowns to the laboratory.

It set two bars. One body in one grave: at least a fifty percent chance of naming it. A group of men mixed together: a means of identification for at least sixty percent of the men who might be in it.

For the Oklahoma, it worked. Of 388 men exhumed, 355 got their names back. That was the first episode of this channel.

Before that memo, the Navy had said no to the Oklahoma. In a letter quoted by the U.S. Naval Institute, it argued the men would be taken outside the sanctity of the grave for a third time. The Arizona's unknowns have already been moved twice: from Halawa and Nuuanu to the laboratory, and from the laboratory to the hill.

The memo also drew a line. It does not apply to men entombed in Navy ships that serve as national memorials. It does apply to their shipmates buried in a national cemetery. The hull stays shut. The graves do not have to.

Twelve families 7:06

For the Arizona, the problem was the families. In 2021, the agency had family DNA reference samples for twelve of the 1,177 men. Dental records for 130. Height and build for about half.

For the Oklahoma, the military had held DNA from more than eighty percent of the families. For the Arizona, in recent years, it held about one percent.

"False hope" 7:33

In March 2022, a Navy report to Congress put the cost at about 2.7 million dollars. It said pursuing the effort would give false hope to the vast majority of Arizona families.

Sixty percent of the men never accounted for comes to a number. By the agency's count, it needed family DNA from 643 distinct families.

Operation 85 7:56

In April 2023, a volunteer group launched USS Arizona Operation 85. The number in the name was how many Arizona unknowns were then thought to be buried in the Punchbowl.

They went looking for the families, one by one. According to Stars and Stripes, the group's founder put in about 150,000 dollars of personal money.

Two counts ran side by side. The group's own tally of DNA kits passed 643 in November 2025. The official tally, of samples the services had processed, was lower: 613 that month, 625 in March.

The threshold is met 8:37

On the twenty-third of April 2026, the agency announced it. The sixty percent threshold for the USS Arizona Unknown Identification Project had been met.

In May, the agency gave the group's founder its Superior Public Service Award. In August, the agency and the group signed a memorandum of understanding.

Three years. From twelve families on file to 643.

Casket X-97 9:05

One man from the Arizona has already come home by another road, and it runs through the Oklahoma.

A casket labelled X-97, buried at Nuuanu, was exhumed in the Oklahoma project. The remains in it matched no one from the Oklahoma. So the laboratory widened the search, to everyone missing from Pearl Harbor.

They were Radioman Second Class Floyd Wells, of the Arizona, twenty-four, from Cavalier, North Dakota. He was accounted for in June 2019, by mitochondrial and autosomal DNA. His remains had been recovered, and labelled with the wrong ship.

Which means the record from 1941 can be wrong about the ship. And the Arizona graves on the hill may hold men from somewhere else.

7 December 2026 9:55

Here is what the agency has said it will do.

At six in the morning on the seventh of December 2026, weather permitting, a team plans to disinter eight caskets from the Punchbowl. This is how the agency did it for the West Loch unknowns, in 2024.

On the seventh of October 2024, the agency disinterred eight caskets here for its West Loch Disaster Project: men killed when explosions tore through ships at Pearl Harbor in May 1944, during preparations for the invasion of Saipan.

Five hours later, there is to be a ceremony at Kilo Pier, on Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. More than seven hundred family members of Arizona sailors are expected in Hawaii.

Then groups of eight, in line with cemetery policy, every two to three weeks, until all eighty-six are out. One report says every week. The agency's spokesman says two to three.

The remains go to the agency's laboratory in Hawaii. The DNA work goes to the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory, in Delaware.

There, a profile from each set of remains is compared against the families on file. Each family that gave a sample is one more man who can now be matched, and one fewer who can only be a number.

Eight at a time 11:17

Eighty-six, eight at a time, is about eleven groups. At two to three weeks each, that is five to eight months of digging, by our arithmetic, before the laboratory has finished anything.

What this will not do is open the ship. The men inside the Arizona stay where they are. Only the graves on the hill are opened.

The account 11:37

So here is the account. 1,512 aboard. 1,177 dead. More than nine hundred still in the hull. 105 identified by the end of the salvage. About eighty-six buried as Unknowns. Twelve family samples in 2021. 643 by 2026.

For eighty-five years, the last known position of these men has been a stone in the Punchbowl that says Unknown. What may change it is a memo written for another ship, and 643 families who answered.

Next, the Tomb of the Unknowns, at Arlington. In 1984, it received an Unknown from the Vietnam War. In 1998, it was opened, and DNA from a mother and a sister gave him a name. That is the next episode.

Description and sources

We follow the case through the record: the Navy's salvage of 1942-43, which recovered and identified 105 crewmen; the Army's Graves Registration Service, which in September 1947 exhumed about 170 sets of remains associated with the Arizona and buried those it could not identify in 76 grave sites at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific; and a count that still does not agree with itself (85, 88, potentially 141, and 86 in the agency's latest statements). The 2015 Defense Department memo written for the USS Oklahoma set a 60 percent threshold for commingled graves and excluded the ship itself. In 2022 a Navy report called the effort false hope; a volunteer group, USS Arizona Operation 85, went looking for the families, and the agency announced on 23 April 2026 that the threshold had been met. One Arizona sailor, Radioman 2nd Class Floyd Wells, was already identified in 2019, from a casket labelled as the Oklahoma's.

PRIMARY SOURCES

ARCHIVE PLATES — public-domain documents, with author, date, archive and licence.

  • NPS photo — 10 December 1941 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
  • NPS photo — 18 May 1942 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
  • NPS photo — 29 June 1942 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
  • National Archives (NARA 6003563) — 1982 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
  • U.S. Navy photo | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain

... and 3 more plates, each credited on screen in the video and listed in this project's manifest.

Last Known Position reads a missing-in-action case through the record that closed it: the loss report, the excavation and the laboratory.

About the material. Film: the U.S. Navy's footage of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 (National Archives, Record Group 428). Video: the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency's West Loch disinterment at the Punchbowl (2024), which is a different group of unknowns; All Hands Magazine (2016); the U.S. Army 7th Dive Detachment at the Arizona (2019); U.S. 3rd Fleet at the memorial (2026); the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory (2017), via DVIDS. Photographs: U.S. Navy and National Archives (1941-1942, 2003-2011) via Wikimedia Commons. The Arizona disinterment had not begun when this was made. All public domain. No human remains are shown. Diagrams are drawn in code. Nothing here is AI-generated imagery.

The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense visual information does not imply or constitute endorsement. This channel is independent and not affiliated with the U.S. Navy, the National Park Service, USS Arizona Operation 85 or the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

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