WEBVTT

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[silence]

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[light piano music]

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[Dr. Laurel Freas] It's really important, you know, there's a
promise that, that we make as a nation to

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our service members, and that they make to
one another, that no one will be left behind;

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no one will be forgotten; and this
is how the nation executes that promise.

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This is how we go about fulfilling that.

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[Dr. Paul Emanovsky] One of the main differences of what

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people expect to happen
when they see it on TV or in the movies

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versus the reality of working in a human
identification lab or a crime lab is

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that DNA results don't come back within
that 30 minute episode. It takes

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oftentimes much longer for any of
the analytical tests that we do to yield

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a result that we can use in the laboratory.
The USS Oklahoma project was

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one of the main first projects
that we've had to do as a concerted

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effort for a project, and we just
recently hit the 200th ID milestone this

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past, this past week or a couple
weeks ago.

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[Dr. Laurel Freas] The whole reason that we were
able to do these disinterment projects

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is that now with the science and the
technology that we have, we can make an

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argument that these remains that have
been unidentified and unidentifiable for

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over 70 years now we have the capability
to identify them. So the Oklahoma, you know,

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was sort of the pathfinder, the
way forward that showed we can be

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successful doing this. And so based on
their success, we we made the argument to

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disinter the West Virginia and the
California. So the expectations

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are identical that we will be able to
identify all or nearly all of the

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individuals from those two ships
that are still unidentified.

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[Dr. Paul Emanovsky] The amount of effort that goes into
recovering these remains and to making

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identifications is oftentimes a lot of
hard research and analysis prior to even

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getting to go on an investigation or a recovery

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or an exhumation if it was a
disinterment. And then once the remains

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are accessioned into the laboratory, be
it from field work or from exhumations

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from cemeteries, there's just a
large amount of information that we

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have to take in and analytical tests to
perform that all kind of coalesce to

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become a picture of an individual
identification.

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[Dr. Laurel Freas] I'm always surprised to hear that folks
aren't aware that we're doing this,

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so it's really important to me to be
able to spread that word so that people

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do know this is something that's ongoing
and even if it takes 75 years or longer,

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we're not going to give up we're going
to keep trying.

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[Music]