More than seven decades after Pearl Harbor, Joe Triolo has his mind on an old friend.
The 95 year old Zion resident was aboard the U.S.S. Tangier at Pearl Harbor, when Japanese torpedo bombers decimated the U.S. fleet. His childhood best friend died aboard the U.S.S. Oklahoma. But but his body was never identified, one of nearly 400 from the Oklahoma, buried in mass graves in Honolulu. Now, the Department of Defense has launched a major effort to disinter all of the unidentified sailors and marines from the Oklahoma, to apply modern science, in an effort to finally bring them home.
“The Oklahoma, was like a home to me and my brother,” Triolo recalls. The two were assigned to the giant ship straight out of boot camp, and Triolo’s best friend Donald McCloud followed eight months later.
But when Triolo and his brother transferred to other duty prior to the Pearl Harbor attack, McCloud remained on the Oklahoma. And he was below decks when she was hit by multiple torpedoes and capsized just 15 minutes later.
“The Oklahoma was hit first,” Triolo said. “There were nine battleships in that harbor.”
Running to his battle station on his new ship, U.S.S. Tangier, Triolo began firing at the Japanese planes that were dropping torpedoes unhindered on the American fleet. He still remembers watching as the U.S.S. Utah, which was moored next to his ship, was hit.
“I was firing on the plane that hit her,” Triolo says. “I could see the pilot in the cockpit!”
Over 400 sailors and Marines died on the Oklahoma that day, most trapped below decks in the giant ship which would not be righted for over a year.
“That haunts me to this day,” he says. “After they attacked, they found out that some of them had been there for a week or so, alive.”
By the time recovery teams could remove the dead, the remains were too badly decomposed to identify. Today, they are buried in multiple graves, in Honolulu’s Punchbowl Cemetery. But now, the Department of Defense says an intensive effort is about to be launched, to try to put names with those remains.
“They were separated to like body parts, for the most part,” says Rear Admiral Michael Franklin, director of the Defense Department’s POW/MIA Accounting Agency. “Our task will be to disinter about five graves a week over the course of the next six months, then in the span of five years, make those identifications.”
Of the 388 unidentified crew from the Oklahoma, 18 were from Illinois.
“This is something our mother would have wanted,” says George Sternisha, whose uncle, Michael Galajdik is believed to have perished on the Oklahoma. “Our goal has always been to get his remains, and get them back to Illinois.”
Sternisha and his sister have both submitted DNA samples, to aid in the identification effort. Admiral Franklin is quick to caution that his team won’t be able to identify all of the remains. But he is optimistic.
“There are situations beyond our control which will limit us from doing a 100% identification,” he said. “But we will account for the vast majority, and I’m pleased to be able to lead this effort.”
Triolo notes that any news would be welcome for Donald McCloud’s friends and family. Since 1941, they have had no information at all about his fate.
“Did he perish with the ship, was he buried? What happened? We don’t know!”
Sternisha takes that one step further. If and when he gets the call from the Pentagon that his uncle has been positively identified, he wants to bring him back to Joliet, for burial at the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery.
“I would like to go to Hawaii, and accompany his remains home,” he said. Asked what his mother would think, Sternisha didn’t hesitate.
“I think she would break down in tears!”
