Project Oklahoma to Identify USS Oklahoma Unknowns-- Part 2

Continued from my Saw the Elephant: Civil War blog.

Bud Hannon's remains were unknown along with so many of his shipmates and were buried in graves marked Unknowns.  However, in 2015, it was decided that would have to be corrected.  Project Oklahoma began which was by and large reliant on DNA testing.

Said Carrie Legarde, a project lead for Project Oklahoma: "For a large project like this, where the remains are reallly commingled, we had to do a lot of DNA testing.  And so that's where we need family members involvement, because we need a DNA reference sample from the family that we can compare  to the remains."

The project takes time and involves labs across the country.  For this project, initial processing was done at  the defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency lab at the Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam Field, then, further analysis at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, and DNA testing at the Armed Forces Laboratory at Dover, Delaware.

"And they provide us thatn information to help us kind of piece together the remains basically, it's kind of like a big puzzle that we have to put together and sort out," Legarde said.  "And, once we can figure out which remains go together,  we can figure out who they belong to."