Of all the terrible, tragic days seared into the collective memory of the American people, few were as unquestionably world-changing as the “date which will live in infamy": December 7th, 1941. The day the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a devastating surprise attack on the US Naval Base in Pearl Harbor, Hawai’i. The culmination of years of diplomatic and economic dispute between Japan and America, the colossal bombardment of the harbor and surrounding military installations forced the United States to declare war on its attacker, formally drawing the nation into the already-ongoing Second World War. By the time the attack ended, 2,403 American military personnel and civilians were dead or dying, and nine Navy vessels (including five battleships) lay on the sea floor with another dozen damaged. The Japanese followed the surprise bombing with further attacks.

Of all the Americans killed during the attack on Pearl Harbor, 1,177, nearly half were Marines and Sailors assigned to one of those sunk battleships, the USS Arizona. Of her entire crew, only 335 survived. Of those lost, 900 remain aboard the wreck, formally entombed within the very vessel they perished aboard, where it lies today below the iconic USS Arizona Memorial (part of the Pearl Harbor National Memorial). The remaining 277 are buried in the National Memorial of the Pacific in Honolulu, HI. Yet despite the fact that these men were recovered and buried in marked graves, 86 of their tombstones bear the word “UNKNOWN.” But that sad reality may soon change as efforts are underway to identify the last unidentified remains of those who perished aboard the USS Arizona.

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The History of the Battleship USS Arizona

Commissioned on October 17th, 1917, the Arizona first served as a gunnery training ship and then as a rather overqualified transport bringing American troops home after the end of WWI in late 1918.

Over the next decades, she served all over the world, from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Starting in 1921, she spent the next nineteen years homeported out of San Pedro, California, during which time she underwent extensive modernization from 1929 to 1931. In 1940, Arizona joined the other battleships of the Navy’s Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor, the base from which she operated until her sinking.

The Attack on Pearl Harbor & Sinking of the USS Arizona

The attack began at 7:55 am, when the relative peace of the sunny Sunday morning turned to chaos as the first Japanese planes zoomed over Pearl Harbor. A wave of nearly 200 aircraft, including bombers, fighters, and torpedo planes, screamed through the blue Hawaiian skies, dropping their ordnance on the surprised troops and civilians below.

A second wave followed a little under an hour later. American forces on the ground and their ships did what they could to counter the attack, but anti-air defenses inflicted minimal damage on the surprise attackers, and the Japanese managed to destroy or cripple most of the US’s aircraft on the ground. All told, a mere six American fighters were able to take to the air and face the enemy planes. By the time the attack ended, over 2,400 Americans had lost their lives, received mortal wounds, or become trapped without any hope of rescue in the hulls of sunken or damaged vessels (for example, three Sailors aboard the battleship USS West Virginia lived for over two weeks in an airtight compartment before they, too, perished).

The Arizona took several direct hits from Japanese bombs in the first minutes of the attack, one of which penetrated her deck and destroyed one of her magazines, which in turn detonated a second magazine. A colossal explosion tore through the ship, destroying the forward portions of its hull and superstructure. Less than fifteen minutes into the attack, the USS Arizona sank to the bottom of the harbor, lost along with over three-quarters of her crew.

While the attack was an unquestionable victory for the Japanese, it failed to cripple the Pacific Fleet as they had hoped. By a stroke of luck, none of America’s vital aircraft carriers were in port on that day, preventing the potential destruction of some of the Navy’s most important vessels. And nearly all the vessels that were sunk underwent repairs and returned to service during WWII (the West Virginia herself was present at the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay on September 2nd, 1945). In fact, only three wound up as total losses: the battleships USS Oklahoma, USS Utah, and USS Arizona.

Identifying the Last Unknown Crewmembers of the Arizona

In the aftermath of the ship’s sinking, the identities of those Sailors and Marines of the Arizona lost alongside her were, for the most part, identified over time. Eventually, only 86 of the men interred in Honolulu remained unidentified. But thanks to the efforts of an advocacy group, their tombstones may soon bear their names at last.

Founded in 2023 by the great-nephew of one of the lost Arizona Sailors whose remains have yet to be positively identified, Operation 85 spent over two years working diligently to collect enough DNA samples from family members of the unidentified to conduct proper testing on their remains.

On November 1st, they announced the collection of their 653rd DNA kit, surpassing their initial goal of 643, a number based on the Pentagon’s standard requiring DNA reference samples from at least 60% of people potentially related to unidentified and deceased servicemembers from a particular unit or ship.

The success of Operation 85 led the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency to announce (as initially reported by Stars and Stripes on November 21st, 2025) their intention to disinter the last 86 men of the Arizona (as well as the remains of 55 other unidentified) Pearl Harbor casualties. While no specific timeline has been set nor detailed plans announced, it hopefully won’t be long before the last Sailors and Marines who perished aboard the USS Arizona on that infamous day in 1941 are reinterred in graves that bear their names.

Suggested reads:

• Operation Linebacker I: The Day the Easter Offensive Stalled
• The Sinking of the USS Lexington and the Tales That Survived
• "The Last Full Measure:" The Anniversary of President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address