DNA technology used to ID Fort Scott sailor killed in Pearl Harbor attack


DNA technology used to ID Fort Scott sailor killed in Pearl Harbor attack

The military has just identified a missing service member from the Kansas City region, who had been missing since the attack on pearl harbor in 1941.Navy Fireman 3rd Class William L. Barnett, of Fort Scott, Kansas, was just 21 years old on that day in 1941. He was assigned to the battleship USS West Virginia when it was attacked by enemy aircraft.During efforts to salvage the ship, the remains of 66 crew members were found but could not be identified. Barnett was one of those 66.”That’s the whole reason that we’re here because those families deserve to have their loved one back,” Army Sgt. 1st Class Sean Everette, of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.It’s the agency’s job to identify the thousands of service members still unaccounted for, no matter how long they’ve been gone.”We are literally working on hundreds between the two labs, hundreds, if not, you know, over 1,000, but definitely in the hundreds of cases at any one time in our laboratories,” Everette said.In Barnett’s case, remains of the 66 missing sailors were interred as unknowns at the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. From June to October 2017, 35 caskets were disinterred. The remains were sent to a military laboratory. Last September, Barnett’s remains were found using dental records and DNA technology.”Those kinds of burials of unknowns, there can often be more than one person in a single casket so there could they call it commingling. And so there can be, you know, there can be one there could be two, there could be 20 different people buried in the same casket,”Everette said.In Barnett’s case, DNA technology could only be used if a family member submitted a sample first, which at times creates another concern. Those samples are used to identify missing service members and nowhere else. But all of this work means after all these years, William L. Barnett will finally come home.Barnett will be laid to rest with full military honors May 29 in Fort Scott.

The military has just identified a missing service member from the Kansas City region, who had been missing since the attack on pearl harbor in 1941.

Navy Fireman 3rd Class William L. Barnett, of Fort Scott, Kansas, was just 21 years old on that day in 1941. He was assigned to the battleship USS West Virginia when it was attacked by enemy aircraft.

During efforts to salvage the ship, the remains of 66 crew members were found but could not be identified. Barnett was one of those 66.

“That’s the whole reason that we’re here because those families deserve to have their loved one back,” Army Sgt. 1st Class Sean Everette, of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

It’s the agency’s job to identify the thousands of service members still unaccounted for, no matter how long they’ve been gone.

“We are literally working on hundreds between the two labs, hundreds, if not, you know, over 1,000, but definitely in the hundreds of cases at any one time in our laboratories,” Everette said.

In Barnett’s case, remains of the 66 missing sailors were interred as unknowns at the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. From June to October 2017, 35 caskets were disinterred. The remains were sent to a military laboratory. Last September, Barnett’s remains were found using dental records and DNA technology.

“Those kinds of burials of unknowns, there can often be more than one person in a single casket so there could they call it commingling. And so there can be, you know, there can be one there could be two, there could be 20 different people buried in the same casket,”
Everette said.

In Barnett’s case, DNA technology could only be used if a family member submitted a sample first, which at times creates another concern. Those samples are used to identify missing service members and nowhere else. But all of this work means after all these years, William L. Barnett will finally come home.

Barnett will be laid to rest with full military honors May 29 in Fort Scott.


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