Clarkfield sailor identified as USS Oklahoma casualty
Navy Fireman 3rd Class Kenneth L. Holm, of Clarkfield, missing from World War II, has now been accounted for.
Captain Nathaniel Strandquist, the commanding officer at the Navy Operational Support Center in Minneapolis, said in a statement this week: “Bringing our fallen home to their final resting place is a sacred obligation that our nation takes seriously, no matter how much time may have passed.”
Stranquist says the sailors under his command are honored to provide full honors and they hope Wednesday’s ceremony will bring closure to the Holm family. Holm’s funeral will be held at 2 p.m. Wednesday and he will be buried at Fort Snelling.
In 2008, the Navy provided a headstone for a grave at the Holm family’s cemetery plot in Clarkfield in Yellow Medicine County. On Dec. 7, 1941, Holm was assigned to the USS Oklahoma, which was moored at Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, when the ship was attacked by Japanese aircraft.
The U.S.S Oklahoma sustained multiple torpedo hits, which caused it to quickly capsize. The attack on the ship resulted in the deaths of 429 crewmen, including Holm. 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 interred in the Halawa and Nu’uanu Cemeteries.
In September 1947, tasked with recovering and identifying fallen U.S. personnel in the Pacific Theater, members of the American Graves Registration Service (AGRS) disinterred the remains of U.S. casualties from the two cemeteries and transferred them to the Central Identification Laboratory at Schofield Barracks.
The laboratory staff was only able to confirm the identifications of 35 men from the USS Oklahoma at that time. The AGRS subsequently buried the unidentified remains in 46 plots at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP), known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu.
In October 1949, a military board classified those who could not be identified as non-recoverable, including Holm.
In April 2015, the Deputy Secretary of Defense issued a policy memorandum directing the disinterment of unknowns associated with the USS Oklahoma.
On June 15, 2015, DPAA personnel began exhuming the remains from the NMCP for analysis. To identify Holm’s remains, scientists from DPAA and the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial (mtDNA) DNA analysis, which his family members, as well as circumstantial evidence and laboratory analysis, to include dental comparisons and anthropological analysis, which matched Holm’s records.
DNA analysis and circumstantial evidence were used in the identification of his remains.
Of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II, more than 400,000 died during the war.
Currently there are 73,041 (approximately 26,000 are assessed as possibly-recoverable) still unaccounted for from World War II. Holm’s name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at an American Battle Monuments Commission site along with the others who are missing from WWII.
A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.