Remains Of Minnesotan Navy Seamen Killed During Pearl Harbor Identified Through DNA Analysis
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — A sailor who served aboard the USS Oklahoma during World War II has now been accounted for.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) is an organization within the United States Department of Defense that works to recover missing personnel who are listed as prisoners of war, or missing in action.
On Jan. 6 the DPAA announced that Navy Seaman 2nd Class Lloyd R. Timm, 19, of Kellogg, Minnesota was accounted for.
Timm had been assigned to the battleship USS Oklahoma on Dec. 7, 1941, when it was moored at Ford Island, Pearl Harbor. The vessel was targeted by Japanese aircraft and eventually capsized, after sustaining multiple torpedo hits.
429 crewmen died in the attack, including Timm.
In the aftermath, between December 1941 and June 1944 Navy personnel worked to recover the remains of the crew. They were interred in the Halawa and Nu'uanu Cemeteries.
Then, in 1947 officials with the American Graves Registration Service disinterred the remains to identify them. The staff was only able to confirm the identities of 35 of the men aboard the USS Oklahoma at that time.
The remaining bodies were buried in 46 plots at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.
In November 2015, DPAA personnel decided to exhume the remains again. Scientists used, "dental and anthropological analysis along with mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome DNA analysis," to identify the remains of Lloyd R. Timm on Sept. 27, 2019.
He'll now be buried in Wabasha, Minnesota on May 25. His personnel profile can be viewed by clicking here.
