US to exhume bodies of Pearl Harbor victims

Pearl Harbor, Oahu. Image by Michele Meyer / CC BY 2.0

The US military has announced a plan to exhume the remains of as many as 388 servicemen who died during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The remains will be taken to a laboratory in Hawaii to be analyzed, and servicemen who are able to be identified will be returned to their families. This plan follows a series of attempts to identify those found after the attack, many of whom were removed from the wreckage and interred in Hawaii cemeteries as ‘unknowns’. In 2003 remains were disinterred from a cemetery and five servicemen were identified using evidence provided by a Pearl Harbor survivor. Read more: reuters.com