May 2025 UPDATE MESSAGE from Kevin Kline

Dear Families and Supporters,

Thank you for your patience as it’s been quite a few months since our last official email newsletter update. We have not stopped working, in fact we’ve been busier than ever. Not only have we been racing full speed towards our number of 643 crew members represented by DNA at the Armed Force DNA Lab, we have also been amassing the largest collection of documents and files related to the entire U.S.S. Arizona crew. This includes the crew member’s full personnel records from the National Records Center in St. Louis, medical records, dental records, US Army IDPF files, letters, photos and everything you could imagine. All this information is being organized into an easy to use database and gives our team instant access to the records we will need to assist the Navy and Marines with bringing home some of their fellow service members, and some of our own family members.

It’s our goal at the end of this project to make all of these important files, records, documents and photos of the most iconic battleship in US Naval history and it’s crew available to everyone online for generations to come.

We’re working on this project through our new partnership with OPERATION 85 FOUNDATION, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) public charity created in June of last year to assist any and all families of missing US Service members find resolution. Thank you to those that have already donated to Operation 85 Foundation. 100% of the donations at this time are being used solely for the U.S.S. Arizona unknowns project. We send out thousands of letters and postcards searching for new family members so every penny helps with postage, printing and general costs. All donations to Operation 85 Foundation are fully tax deductible. You can visit the foundation website and make a secure donation at: https://www.op85.org.

There is still plenty of work ahead. Our goal has always been to find a resolution by or before the 85th Anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. December 7, 2026. We still have over a year and half to that deadline and many more things to accomplish. We will not stop nor will we be deterred.

Thank you all for supporting our efforts over the past two years. If you have not returned your DNA kit – we are ALL waiting on you. Please get those kits back as soon as possible.

As always, special thanks to our Operation 85 team of volunteers – John Hardy, Melinde Lutz-Byrne and Danny Abell for always going above and beyond and working at top speed!

-Kevin Kline
Grand Nephew of GM2c Robert Edwin Kline
Operation 85, Executive Director