Make a Difference This Memorial Day: Help Identify Unknown Sailors from the USS Arizona

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Make a Difference This Memorial Day:
Help Identify Unknown Sailors from the USS Arizona

The telegram arrived on a cold January day in 1942. It read, “After an exhaustive search, it has been found impossible to locate your son, Robert Edwin Kline, gunner’s mate, second class, U.S. Navy.” The sailor’s mother refused to accept the news and continued to hold out hope. How could it be? Bobby was just 22. Robert Edwin Kline was one of 1,177 sailors and Marines killed in the attack on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Most of the sailors killed aboard the Arizona went down with the ship. However, the bodies of 85 (and possibly as many as 150) were buried, their remains unidentified and comingled, in graves at the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. More than eight decades later, Kevin Kline, Robert Kline’s great-nephew, is among those leading an effort to identify the fallen. He is the driving force behind Operation 85 – a civilian effort led by family members of the unrecovered to assist the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) in acquiring DNA samples from surviving family members. Continue reading...