Students, Faculty Help Bring Closure to Families of Pearl Harbor Victims

It was 80 years ago, on Dec. 7, 1941, the U.S.S. Oklahoma was one of the many ships bombed and sunk by the Japanese Empire in the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor. After the U.S.S. Oklahoma sank, nearly 400 of the victims were unidentifiable. Since that time, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) has existed with the mission of identifying the now more than 80,000 service members who have been lost in military conflicts.

This is where UNO’s Sachin Pawaskar, Ph. D., MBA, MS, a professor of practice in the College of Information Science & Technology (IS&T), comes in. In 2016, Pawaskar formally launched the Commingled Remains Analytics Ecosystem (CoRA) project, which was started to streamline the process of identifying individuals lost in the sinking of U.S.S. Oklahoma. The project began when Franklin Damann, deputy laboratory director of the DPAA at Offutt Airbase, reached out to UNO’s College of IS&T about finding ways to make the long process of identifying individuals more efficient.

“Partnering with UNO to develop CoRA has been interesting and a learning experience for us all. I have worked with Dr. Pawaskar a lot over the years and many students at UNO, including a capstone class, and I’ve really enjoyed it,” said Carrie LeGarde, the USS Oklahoma project lead. "We have been trying to create this system to help us complete our mission, but it has been a way to learn about development and collaborating with other fields of study.”

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Since the beginning of the project, over 90% of the 380 service members that perished on the U.S.S. Oklahoma have been identified, a percentage that Pawaskar said is unheard of in terms of identifying previously unidentified armed forces members. Such a feat was achieved through the gathering of specific characteristics of the bones that have been recovered including DNA analysis, isotope analysis, taphonomy, pathology, and trauma, as well as the use of measurements to create a biological profile for each specimen which includes determination of age, sex, stature and ancestry.

“It allows the anthropologist to create a holistic picture of what's going on at the specimen level, at the individual level, and at the project level” Pawaskar said. “So, the objective is to make it easier to segregate these bones into individuals.”

Since being launched CoRA has turned a weeks-long process of looking through hand-written notes and Excel spreadsheets into a job that can be done in a matter of hours and days. As more service members can be identified, more of their families can find closure.

“Listening to the stories at the family events held by DPAA where people who are 70 [or] 80 years old, talking about how they never saw that uncle of theirs and how their grandma would tell stories about them,” Pawaskar said. “Hearing these stories can make grown men have tears in their eyes. And so, I feel very passionate about bringing closure to the families of the service members lost to past conflicts.”

Watch: IS&T Research on Identifying Fallen Service Members Focus of Department of Defense Visit to UNO

Because of its successes in identifying those lost on the U.S.S. Oklahoma, the CoRA project was expanded, now covering other projects where service members’ lives were lost, such as the Korean War; Operation Tidal Wave, a bombing campaign over Romania during World War II; and the Battle of Tarawa in the Pacific.

Although the project initially focused on identifying fallen service members, the applications of the CoRA software ranges from helping local law enforcement identify victims in a crime, to identification victims of mass causality events, to assisting in the identification of victims of genocide,

“And I'm sure in the future there will be more projects,” Pawaskar said. “It is mostly designed for projects that have difficult challenges where there are commingled remains that is to say where there is mixing of bones from different individuals in one in one grave or an incident."

Even with successes in identifying many fallen service members and the expansion of the project, there are still some who have not been identified.

“It’s heart-wrenching for the families whose family member may not have been identified. But we don't give up hope,” Pawaskar said. “We always hope that in the future there might be newer techniques and breakthroughs that come up that allow us to make progress on them.”

Currently, the United States is among the only countries in the world spending resources on bringing back and identifying fallen service members, and the mission to identify all those lost to conflict has not ended, even as the story for most killed on the U.S.S. Oklahoma has some closure now.

“As a civilian, this project allows me to serve my country and to honor the fallen soldiers from past conflicts, people who have served our country and given their lives for it,” Pawaskar said. “I’m also an immigrant. What better way is there for me to contribute to my country and do meaningful work that brings closure to the families of these fallen soldiers.”

A ceremony for the U.S.S. Oklahoma will be streamed for public viewing at 3:30 P.M. on Dec. 7. You can access the livestream here.