As Veterans Day approaches, we gather updates from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency on one of its largest and most complex projects ever undertaken to recover America's lost soldiers, sailors and marines.
Kelly McKeague is a retired Air Force major general and the director of the DPAA. He previously joined The Conversation in March 2026, shortly after the mission to recover the remains from the Oryoku Maru began.
The Oryoku Maru was a Japanese POW transport ship that was known by a different name by the prisoners aboard — the "hell ship." In 1944, American aircraft sank the ship in Subic Bay in the Philippines, killing hundreds of American and Allied POWs aboard.
Now, over eight decades later, the DPAA is making dives to the wreck of the Oryoku Maru to recover lost artifacts and identify the lives that were lost at sea.
The underwater recovery mission has become the subject of the Discovery Channel program "Expedition Unknown," whose 17th season premiered with an episode titled "Hunt for World War II Hellships."
With the mission underway, McKeague returned to HPR to share updates on their recovery efforts. He also spoke about a new project to exhume and identify the unknown USS Arizona soldiers buried at National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, or Punchbowl cemetery.
Interview Highlights
On recovering remains from the Oryoku Maru
KELLY MCKEAGUE: We removed fragmented ship components, and more importantly, we started excavating the sediment and debris onto a barge where we had screening stations, much like we do a traditional terrestrial recovery, and so from that … the team recovered some material evidence that correlated with U.S. service members having been in that hold. … There was a boot that, the boot sole, that had the name of the POW etched into it. There were eyeglasses that were of obviously U.S. origin, and … what we believe to be human remains. Now those remains are undergoing forensic analysis. They had to go through a pretty long desalinization process, and that forensic analysis has begun.
On documenting the mission with the Discovery Channel
MCKEAGUE: The Discovery Channel program "Expedition Unknown" actually asked us about diving with us on this particular project. They had heard about it. They thought it was interesting, and so they actually made us a part of their two-part season premiere. … It's a very powerful show that the Discovery Channel aired, simply because it showed the complexity of the mission as well as the poignancy of the remains and material evidence being put through the screening station — and again, hopefully, will turn out to be an ID. This is a multi-year project, given the enormity and complexity of the site, and so we will go back again in the spring of 2027 and do another 90-day mission.
On exhuming and identifying the unknown soldiers of Punchbowl Cemetery
MCKEAGUE: It's both about closure answers for families as it is for veterans whose comrades in arms hadn't come home like they did. … The project was approved last month, and so we will disinter all 86 unknowns associated with USS Arizona from Punchbowl over the next, I'd say, probably nine months. … We're very excited about it, and we give full credit to Kevin Kline and his nonprofit called Operation 85 for not only finding families but doing the genealogy with which to find viable families to donate their DNA.
More information about the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency can be found here.
This story aired on The Conversation on Nov. 10, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
