🇺🇸 USS Arizona Update: We Did It — Operation 85 Surpasses the “Impossible” Goal

Dear Family Members and Supporters:

In early October, OP85 researcher John Hardy and I started our morning meeting the same way we’ve started nearly every morning for the past two and a half years — confirming the new families we’d spoken with the night before, adding new submissions into our database, and sending them to the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps casualty offices to begin the process of their DNA kit distribution.

It’s a routine we’ve done nearly 1,400 times — but this one particular morning felt different.

After finishing our count, John gave me the new total for the week: 653

I smiled and said, “Congratulations, that’s ten over what we need, we did it.”

John simply replied, “Congratulations as well — now let’s get to 700.”

The number 643 was the official threshold once deemed impossible — the number the Secretary of War’s office set years ago as the minimum DNA crew FRS required before any U.S.S. Arizona unknowns could be considered for disinterment and identification. A number the current DPAA Director told families was “impractical” to ever achieve.

When Operation 85 began, we had just 25 crew members with families. Many told us it couldn’t be done. We had no support from DPAA, and despite repeated requests from myself for their involvement in raising awareness of our mission, they remained silent.

Surely, if DPAA couldn’t move this fast or operate this efficiently — despite decades of experience — how could a real estate agent from Virginia possibly succeed at this?

But not once did I, our research team, our genealogist, or our families lose faith.

Reaching 643 wasn’t the end of the story — it was proof that collective resolve can overcome institutional doubt. We didn’t celebrate, because we knew this wasn’t about hitting a number; it’s about fulfilling a promise.

Our mission has always been — and remains — to remove the word “UNKNOWN” from every American Hero’s grave who served aboard the U.S.S. Arizona and was lost on December 7, 1941, and to resolve the final resting place of her entire crew.

That number — 643 — was never our finish line. It was only a number used as a bureaucratic roadblock meant to keep families at bay. But Operation 85 climbed right over it.

The Department of War and the DPAA now face a defining choice:

Will they continue to ignore what private citizens and family members have achieved within the POW/MIA field— or will they embrace new, innovative methods that could bring long-overdue closure to thousands of families from every conflict where Americans still remain missing?

The systems and processes that Operation 85 has developed — combining low-cost, high-tech, and highly efficient program management tools with Artificial Intelligence, ingenuity, and organization — are game changers in genealogical research and POW/MIA identification.

Will DPAA have the courage to bring outside success and ideas to the table — or will it cling to the status quo?

If status quo is their answer, then they should be ready to face a new kind of accountability — one led not by institutions, but by families, veterans, and citizens who refuse to accept silence as policy. Operation 85 will not slow down; we will lead forward.

Today, as we celebrate 660 U.S.S. Arizona crew member families we’ve located and sent viable family references to the Navy and Marines, along with nearly 1,400 family members that have participated, we still await some DNA kits to be completed, returned and processed at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Lab, a task stifled by the current government shutdown. Let’s hope our elected leaders can make the right decisions, put aside their partisan politics and agendas, and reopen our government.

Our Next Step: Operation 85 will be formally requesting the disinterment and identification of the UNKNOWNS related to the U.S.S. Arizona currently buried in multiple commingled graves at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Oahu, HI. I’ll keep you posted!

As we move toward continuing to locate every family member and also formally requesting the identifications of the unknowns to begin, we do so with the knowledge that together, we are rewriting history — one family, one name, one hero at a time. Let’s continue to finish this job — together.

With gratitude and unwavering determination,

-Kevin Kline
Executive Director
U.S.S. Arizona “Operation 85”
“Grandnephew of GM2c Robert Edwin Kline, U.S.S. Arizona”