Another sailor initially buried at the National Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl in a grave marked unknown following the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack has been identified.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced Tuesday that the remains of Navy Seaman 2nd Class James N. Phipps, 24, of Rainier, Ore., will be buried Monday in Portland with full military honors.
Phipps was assigned to the USS Oklahoma, which was moored at Ford Island when the battleship was hit by seven to nine Japanese torpedoes. The battleship rolled over in the harbor, trapping hundreds of men inside.
The remains of the ship’s men were ultimately buried in 46 plots at Punchbowl
in unmarked grave sites
after military officials were able to identify only
35 men.
The attack on the ship resulted in 429 deaths.
No single vessel at Pearl Harbor, with the exception of the USS Arizona, suffered as many fatalities.
From December 1941 to June 1944, Navy personnel recovered the remains of the deceased crew, which were subsequently buried in the Halawa and Nuuanu cemeteries and later moved to Punchbowl.
In April 2015 the deputy secretary of defense issued a policy memorandum directing the disinterment of the graves marked unknown associated with the USS Oklahoma, and accounting agency personnel began exhuming the remains for analysis and identification.
To identify Phipps’ remains, scientists used mitochondrial DNA analysis, which matched a nephew, a niece and a grandnephew. Circumstantial evidence and laboratory analysis, to include dental comparisons, also matched Phipps’ records.
Last week the Pentagon identified two other Oklahoma sailors: Seaman 2nd Class Lewis L. Wagoner, 20, of Douglass County, Mo., who was buried in Whitewater, Kan.; and Navy Lt. j.g. Aloysius H. Schmitt, 32, of St. Lucas, Iowa, who was buried in Dubuque, Iowa.
