DNA Test Solves A WWII Puzzle That's Confounded Historians For Decades

The answer to the eight-decades-old puzzle certainly came as welcome news to one San Diego family. “It’s the end of a journey,” 80-year-old James Brown told The San Diego Union-Tribune in 2021. “We couldn’t be happier.” After all, the outcome marked the conclusion of years of hard work to fulfill a sacred military promise.

It’s fitting, then, that the man who carved the path to the satisfying solution was a former Navy seaman who’d survived the Pearl Harbor attack. Ray Emory would’ve been just 19 or 20 years old at the time of the attack, but he’d been experienced enough to put up some resistance against the Japanese fighters. And he seemingly never lost his committed instincts.

On that terrible day in 1941, Emory had been part of the crew for the USS Honolulu. This light cruiser was one of the fortunate ships to escape from the raid relatively unscathed. But Emory couldn’t have known that would be the craft’s fate when he raced to lay down fire from one of its .50-caliber machine guns. The seaman never claimed to be a hero, though.

Emory noted to the Los Angeles Times in 2003 that he was far from the only serviceman to take the fight to the Imperial Japanese forces during the Pearl Harbor attack. In fact, the heroic actions of these like-minded men brought down 29 enemy airplanes. But many of the ships at the Naval base were not as lucky as Emory’s Honolulu. And the USS Oklahoma was one of the worst hit.

USS Oklahoma had been part of the U.S. Navy for a quarter of a century. The historic craft had even seen action during World War I. Yet after the Oklahoma suffered cataclysmic damage at Pearl Harbor, it would never sail again. And of the 400+ people trapped on board that day, only a handful would escape with their lives.

Fourteen of the 429 men who lost their lives on the Oklahoma were Marines and the rest were sailors. And as the U.S. military prides itself on “leaving no person behind,” it did everything possible to preserve the lost crew and the ship they perished on. But that kind of operation is not an easy task — and undoubtedly, it was even harder in the 1940s.

For the next two and a half years, though, the U.S. Navy carried out salvage operations for the Oklahoma. And true to its promise to never leave a downed comrade behind, the military recovered both the ship and the remains of the doomed crew. Yet there was more bad news: it proved impossible to identify the lost seamen individually.

The military knows how important it is for the families of the deceased to commemorate their loved ones. So, with seemingly no other option available to them, officials decided to inter the remains of the Oklahoma’s seamen in a pair of cemeteries in Hawaii. There, the lost souls would be labeled as “unknowns.” But this just wasn’t good enough for some.

Two years after the war ended, the American Graves Registration Service (AGRS) went back to the cemeteries for another look. The organization had been charged with finding and identifying the remains of American servicemen who’d died in the Pacific during WWII. This meant unearthing the Oklahoma’s dead and getting them across to the Central Identification Laboratory at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. Then the real work began.

This time, the workers at the lab had more success than the salvage crews. After analyzing the remains, the Central Identification Lab staff managed to identify 35 seamen who’d died on the Oklahoma. Yet while the effort was commendable and certainly valuable for the sailors’ families, it still meant that 394 men remained unaccounted for. The sad news didn’t stop there, either.

The AGRS had done all it could do to help put names to the Oklahoma’s dead — for the time being. That’s why the remains that had yet to be identified were reburied. They were placed in 46 graves within the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP) in Honolulu. These remains were deemed “non-recoverable” in 1949… and stayed that way until Ray Emory stepped up.

Emory’s mission began in 1990. It was then that he went to pay his respects at the NMCP — and made a disturbing discovery. The former seaman had wanted to see where specifically the men from the Oklahoma had been buried… and no one could tell him. This situation was evidently unsatisfactory for Emory, and it kicked off an incredible chain of events.

At first, Emory only wanted officials to show guests which servicemen had lost their lives at Pearl Harbor and which had fallen in different conflicts. It was a battle close to his heart, after all. But that idea must have sparked something in Emory because his simple mission soon ballooned into a much more complicated vision.

Instead of settling for separate headstones for his lost Pearl Harbor allies, Emory wanted to actually identify somebody who’d been killed on the USS Oklahoma. Nobody had done this since the interment of these remains in 1949 — but that didn’t put Emory off. So his first stop was the burial records. And it seemingly wasn’t too long before he found some success.

The Pearl Harbor survivor discovered a folder with 27 names of U.S. servicemen inside. This list had the ranks and burial numbers of these men as well. Armed with these facts, Emory then found where the remains of these lost souls were buried. But there was one more step that Emory wanted to take — and he would need the military’s help to do it.

In 2003 — 13 years after Emory first got the idea at the NMCP — the U.S. military approved the disinterment of a casket that related to Emory’s list. And amazingly enough, Emory’s theory proved to be correct: his evidence helped identify five servicemen who’d died on the Oklahoma. Yet these bodies were far from the only remains in the casket.

It turned out that the casket unearthed by the Department of Defense’s lab in Hawaii actually held the remains of as many as 100 servicemen. None of these men had previously been identified, either. But Emory’s success with confirming five IDs pushed him to continue the task of finding the rest. He started with the outstanding 22 names on his list.

By 2015, Emory was still fighting the good fight. That’s when — after years of back and forth — the Department of Defense finally reached a decision about the USS Oklahoma unknowns. Happily, it said that all of the graves relating to the Oklahoma crew should be unearthed and examined. Officials were even hopeful that they could identify the majority of the remains.

The work of disinterring the remains fell to the staff at the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA). It took five months for them to uncover all of the unknowns from the Oklahoma. But as soon as the remains were unearthed, they were shipped swiftly to a laboratory for forensic analysis. There were 13,000 bones and 388 sailors and Marines to identify.

The basic plan was to log the bones and then extract DNA samples from the larger specimens. These DNA samples could then be analyzed and compared against the DNA of relatives of the USS Oklahoma crew. The DPAA was set on determining the identities of 80 percent of the victims — and it wouldn’t be long before the work began to bear fruit.

In 2016 — almost 75 years after the sinking of the Oklahoma — the DPAA achieved its first identification from this project. The man they ID’d was Petty Officer 1st Class Vernon Luke. Born in Green Bay, Wisconsin, he had fought in both the First and Second World Wars. Luke had been 43 years old at the time of his death.

It’s important to remember, though, this project was more than just a military undertaking. The results would make a tangible difference for the families of the soldiers and sailors who had been deemed “non-recoverable” after perishing during WWII. The Brown family from San Diego, for instance, had long felt unable to move past their loved one’s death.

The Browns — and hundreds of families just like them — had no gravestone to visit to grieve for their late relative. The family had been sent the traditional U.S. flag and Purple Heart medal, sure, but that could never be as poignant as an actual grave. And this lack of knowledge continued to have a great influence on their lives.

Lauretta Brown even gave one of her children the name of her lost brother as a way of honoring him. And when a couple of her other kids grew up, they followed their unknown uncle into the Marines. “We were always hoping one day they would identify him and bring him home,” James Brown told The San Diego Union-Tribune in 2021.

They knew their loved one’s name, of course: John F. Middleswart. And they also knew that Middleswart had gone missing during the Second World War after joining the Marines. There had even been a story about Marine Corps Pfc. Middleswart in a local paper at the time of his apparent death. The story’s vagueness really brought home the feeling of unknowing the family must have felt.

The paper’s story simply stated that Middleswart “had been reported missing in the Pacific warfare.” It goes on to reveal, “The notice from the War Department was the first word relatives have had in six weeks.” And other than pointing out that Middleswart joined the Marines aged 19, the article had no other information. It’s difficult to imagine just how heartbreaking this notice would have been for Middleswart’s parents.

That’s why, when the Department of Defense began to work in earnest to identify the unknown sailors from the USS Oklahoma, the Browns responded to an interesting request. The staff working on the project wanted DNA samples from family members to compare to those taken from the bones. Lauretta, James, and Edward Brown supplied theirs in 2009… and then waited.

The family’s hopes must have been high after the remains of the men from the USS Oklahoma were exhumed in 2015. The DPAA’s hard work was really paying off, too. It announced its 100th identification in December 2017 and its 200th identification 15 months later.

Then the Brown family finally got the news they had been waiting for. It turned out that Marine Corps Pfc. John F. Middleswart’s was the 300th ID confirmed from the USS Oklahoma. The DPAA proved the identity on January 28, 2021, and let the family know the next month. But this time, the Browns got more than a simple notice.

The DPAA gave the Browns a hefty folder full of all the information its laboratory had used to confirm the ID. “The amount of work [the DPAA] did was amazing,” James Brown told The San Diego Union-Tribune. “Anyone who wears the uniform should take comfort in the fact that they will never be forgotten or forsaken.” It led to another important moment, too.

In June 2021, the Brown family held a special funeral ceremony for the remains of Middleswart. It took place in Middleswart’s hometown at the Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego. The private first class was given the deserved recognition of full military honors in front of a gathering of some 50 people. The chaplain also summed up everybody’s feelings.

“December 7, 1941, was a long time ago,” Navy Chaplain Robert LeCompte told Middleswart’s loved ones. “What an amazing miracle it is to have John with us today.” That sentiment was certainly shared by the Brown family. Now, at long last, they could start to heal. And they would have other mementos from that day to keep with them.

The ceremony included, of course, the traditional three-shot rifle salute from seven Marine Corps members. There was also a rendition of “Taps” from a bugle-playing Marine. Yet the token that will likely mean the most to the Browns is the American flag that had been placed on Middleswart’s actual coffin. This was folded and handed to Edward Brown “on behalf of a grateful nation.”

“This means the world to us,” Edward told The San Diego Union-Tribune. Other family members got to finally pay their respects to their fallen loved one, too. Some took pictures and offered private thoughts. A great-nephew even honored Middleswart’s Pearl Harbor sacrifice by putting a lei on the coffin. But there was one more thing officials had to do.

Before the DPAA confirmed his identity, Middleswart’s name had been noted on the Courts of the Missing memorial at the NMCP, which is also known as the Punchbowl. Now, though, officials will etch a rosette beside Middleswart’s name to let people know that he is no longer “unknown.” The staff at the Punchbowl will be doing a lot of this work, too.

In 2021, the DPAA announced that its work on the Oklahoma project had come to an end. The total number of IDs the group had been able to confirm came to 396. That means 396 families can finally grieve for their loved ones. But there was bad news as well.

It meant that the agency had not been able to individually identify the remains of 33 sailors. The agency had, however, confirmed that these remains definitely belonged to lost sailors from the Oklahoma. They were then labeled as group remains and interred at the Punchbowl on December 7, 2021 — exactly 80 years after the Pearl Harbor attack.

But even though the project has come to an end, the remains of the identified USS Oklahoma sailors will continue to be buried in their hometowns. In fact, the latest identity to be confirmed — Navy Seaman 1st Class Biacio Casola — came on January 12, 2022, with a burial set for that April.

This is not the only project in which soldiers’ identities continue to be confirmed, either. In the past month alone, the DPAA has announced its ID discoveries of soldiers from the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Second World War. It just goes to show that forensic science continues to solve the mysteries of our past and enlighten us in wholly unexpected ways.