The U.S. military plans to exhume the remains of 88 sailors and Marines killed aboard the USS Arizona during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, part of a renewed effort to identify servicemen who were buried as unknowns in the aftermath of the assault.

The remains, currently interred at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, will be disinterred beginning in November or December, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, which is overseeing the project. Advances in DNA technology and a growing database of genetic samples from family members have made it increasingly possible to assign names to remains that could not be identified more than eight decades ago, AP reports.

Officials said the process will unfold gradually. About eight sets of remains will be removed every two to three weeks and analyzed. The DNA extracted from the remains will be compared with samples provided by relatives of the missing, many of whom have spent years searching for answers about family members lost in the attack.

The bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 - known historically as the Attack on Pearl Harbor - destroyed or damaged dozens of ships and killed more than 2,400 Americans. The Arizona was struck by bombs that ignited its forward ammunition magazines, causing the battleship to sink in roughly nine minutes. Of the 1,177 sailors and Marines killed aboard the vessel, more than 900 remain entombed within the wreck, which still rests at the harbor floor and serves as a memorial.

Those remains will not be disturbed. The planned exhumations will apply only to individuals buried as unidentified at the Honolulu cemetery.

The identification effort builds on earlier work that used DNA to identify hundreds of Pearl Harbor casualties from other ships, including the USS Oklahoma and the USS West Virginia. Officials say the new project reflects both technological progress and the growing participation of families willing to provide genetic samples.

Among those following the effort closely is Kevin Kline, a real estate agent in northern Virginia whose great-uncle, Robert Edwin Kline, served as a gunner’s mate second class aboard the Arizona. He was 22 when he died in the attack. For much of his life, Mr. Kline said, his family believed his great-uncle’s remains were still aboard the ship. Only in recent years did he learn that some crew members had been buried as unidentified remains on land.

Kline told the Associated Press that he does not assume his relative will be among those identified, but believes the effort could bring a measure of peace to families whose losses have reverberated across generations. 

For years, the Defense Department had resisted calls to exhume the remains, arguing that identification would be difficult because the military possessed dental records or DNA samples for only a small fraction of the victims’ families. As recently as 2021, officials estimated that samples existed for about 1 percent of the families.

Kline helped found an advocacy effort known as Operation 85, which has spent the past three years locating relatives of the missing and encouraging them to submit DNA samples. He says that family members connected to 626 sailors and Marines - just under 60 percent of those still missing - have now provided samples. Only a small number of people contacted declined to participate.

The remains will be transported to the agency’s laboratory at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii for initial analysis. DNA samples will then be sent to the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory at Dover Air Force Base for further testing and comparison.