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Historical Report: Ship Incident 221 (USS Oklahoma) Pearl Harbor, City and County of Honolulu, State of Hawaii United States

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Historical Report: Ship Incident 221 (USS Oklahoma) Pearl Harbor, City and County of Honolulu, State of Hawaii United States FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY Historical Report: Ship Incident 221 (USS Oklahoma) Pearl Harbor, City and County of Honolulu, State of Hawaii United States by AJ Plotke, PhD Asia-Pacific Directorate Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency 590 Moffet St, Bldg 4077 Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, HI 96853-5530 27 October 2017 FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY Historical Report: Ship Incident 221 (USS Oklahoma) Pearl Harbor, City and County of Honolulu, State of Hawaii United States Asia-Pacific Directorate Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency 27 October 2017 INDIVIDUAL ASSOCIATED Service Branch Name Rank Date of Loss Status Number of Service 7 December GLENN, Arthur (NMI) 1610221 MM1c USN KIA 1941 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Machinist’s Mate First Class (MM1c) Arthur (NMI) GLENN first joined the service on 12 April 19171, reenlisted again in the U.S. Navy on 25 February 1939, and reported for duty aboard the USS Oklahoma on 7 March 1941.2 As part of the effort to check Japanese aggression, the U.S. Pacific Fleet conducted exercises in the waters off the Hawaiian coast beginning in May 1940. After the maneuvers the fleet remained in Pearl Harbor, Oahu, to provide a more forward presence than was possible from the U.S. west coast.3 The USS Oklahoma (BB-37) arrived in Pearl Harbor on 6 December 1940, one year and one day prior to the Japanese attack, and spent the next several months participating in exercises and conducting patrols.4 On the morning of 7 December 1941, a fleet of Japanese carriers launched formations of dive bombers, torpedo planes, and fighters against the vessels moored in the shallows of Pearl 1 “NMS-L “Request for Prosthetic Dental Treatment” for GLENN, Arthur, dtd 24 October 1933, Official Military Personnel File for GLENN, Arthur, 1610221, Record Group 24: Records of the Bureau of Naval Personnel, 1789- 2007, National Archives at St. Louis, MO. 2 “Muster Roll of the Crew of the USS Oklahoma for the quarter ending 31 March 1941,” U.S. Navy World War II Muster Rolls, 1938-49, Record Group 24: Records of the Bureau of Navy Personnel, National Archives at College Park, MD. 3 Homer N. Wallin, Pearl Harbor: Why, How, Fleet Salvage and Final Appraisal (Washington, DC: Naval History Division, 1968), 29. 4 Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships (DANFS), Naval History and Heritage and Command, Washington, DC, www.history.navy.mil. FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY Historical Report: Ship 221 (USS OKLAHOMA) Harbor (see Figure 1). The attack decimated the ships and personnel of the fleet and took the United States into World War II. At the beginning of the 7 December 1941 attack, the battleship USS Oklahoma occupied berth F-5 outboard of the USS Maryland (BB-46) in “Battleship Row” off Ford Island (see Figure 2). The first torpedo hit to the ship occurred just before 0800 hours. The USS Oklahoma sustained 429 casualties, quickly capsizing due to damage sustained from multiple torpedoes. According to a roster of USS Oklahoma casualties compiled two weeks after the attack, MM1c GLENN was listed among the missing; his status was subsequently amended to reflect that he died as a result of the attack.5 Pearl Harbor Figure 1. Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Territory of Hawaii. Image from Google Earth. In the immediate aftermath of the sinking of the USS Oklahoma, rescuers worked to save crew members trapped inside the upturned hull and eventually freed thirty-two men. From 9 December 1941 through 27 June 1944, Navy personnel recovered the remains of deceased crewmen. These remains were subsequently interred in two cemeteries: Halawa Naval Cemetery and Nu’uanu Naval Cemetery, the latter a pre-existing plot located within a civilian cemetery that was rapidly expanded due to the high number of casualties from the Pearl Harbor attack. 5 USS Oklahoma casualty roster, 21 December 1941, Casualty Assistance Branch, Record Group 24: Records of the Bureau of Navy Personnel, National Archives at College Park, MD; Individual Deceased Personnel File (IDPF) for GLENN, Arthur (NMI) MM1c 1610221; Record Group 92: Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, Washington National Records Center, Suitland, MD. Page 2 of 13 FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY Historical Report: Ship 221 (USS OKLAHOMA) Most of the remains, thoroughly comingled and recovered during salvage operations, were not identified prior to burial and were therefore interred as “unknowns” at 52 separate burial sites. The remains represented as many as 400 individuals.6 Figure 2. The USS Oklahoma, located off of Ford Island, as indicated by the red arrow. Image from Our Call to Arms: the Attack on Pearl Harbor by Robert Sullivan, ed. After World War II ended, the War Department assigned the American Graves Registration Service (AGRS), U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps, the responsibility for the 6 Mildred Trotter, “Narrative,” 1 March 1949, General Correspondence, Geographic File, 1949-1950, RG 92, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), College Park, MD. NOTE: With the exception of one casualty, the men from the USS Oklahoma who were identified by the Schofield Central Identification Laboratory in the late 1940s were those men who had been buried in single graves, either under crosses bearing their names, or without a known association to the ship. See also the memorandum, “Re: History of the sinking of USS Oklahoma (BB-37) and subsequent attempts to recover and identify her crew,” by Heather Harris, 1 March 2010, available via the U.S. Navy Personnel Command, http://www.public.navy.mil/bupers-npc/support/casualty/Documents/ POW%20MIA/USS%20OKLAHOMA%20(BB-37).pdf. Page 3 of 13 FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY Historical Report: Ship 221 (USS OKLAHOMA) recovery and identification of fallen U.S. service personnel in the Pacific Theater. In September 1947, members of the AGRS disinterred the remains of U.S. casualties from the Halawa and Nu‘uanu Cemeteries and transferred them to the Central Identification Laboratory at Schofield Barracks, Territory of Hawaii. The laboratory staff worked to confirm the identities of those buried with name associations and to make additional identifications of those who had been buried as unknowns. Ultimately, as a result of this work, only thirty-five men from USS Oklahoma were buried as identified individuals. The AGRS buried the unidentified remains known to have been recovered from USS Oklahoma in forty-six separate plots in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP).7 U.S. officials determined that those whose remains could not be identified would be classified as “non-recoverable,” including MM1c GLENN. In his case, this determination was made on 18 October 1949.8 In 2003, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) disinterred a single casket of unknowns from USS Oklahoma that was thought to contain the remains of five individuals, but in reality contained the partial remains of almost one hundred crew members from the ship.9 This disinterment revealed the complexity of USS Oklahoma “unknowns” cases and resulted in years of active, high level negotiations between the Department of Defense, the Service Secretaries, and the agencies responsible for accounting for service members from past conflicts. In 2009, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/MIA Personnel Affairs directed that no more disinterments of unknowns associated with USS Oklahoma would occur until families of the unresolved service members had been located in order to request DNA samples for comparison against samples from the remains. He further directed that all case, medical, and dental records be collected.10 Upon reaching a designated threshold of family reference sample and document collection, JPAC advanced a plan for the disinterment of all additional caskets associated with the ship in 2012. The Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Manpower and Reserve Affairs declined to pursue disinterment, however, expressing concerns about disturbing the sanctity of the graves of the unknowns and reservations about the ability of the accounting community to make a significant number of individual identifications upon disinterment. Responding to inquiries from surviving family members and third-party researchers, JPAC and the wider personnel accounting community contended that the extensive comingling required that all of the unidentified remains from the USS Oklahoma be disinterred and 7 NOTE: The AGRS buried the unknowns from USS Oklahoma in forty-six locations in the cemetery in a total of sixty-two caskets, with some of the locations containing two caskets in one burial site. 8 W. E. Marsden, “Sub: Non-Recoverable Remains of GLENN, Arthur (NMI) 1610221, MM1c USN” 18 October 1949, IDPF for GLENN. 9 NOTE: In January 2015, three elements of the Accounting Community – the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO), and Life Science Equipment Laboratory (LSEL) – combined to become one agency, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA). 10 Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (DASD) Robert J. Newberry, Memorandum for Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs (M&RA), Assistant Secretary of the Navy (M&RA), Director, Joint Staff, 9 December 2009, Subject: Department of Defense (DoD) Policy: Identification of the Remains of The Unknowns from the USS Oklahoma (BB37), DPAA files. Page 4 of 13 FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY Historical Report: Ship 221 (USS OKLAHOMA) BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources: Harris, Heather. Memorandum, “Re: History of the
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