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The Chief Rick Stone and Family Charitable Foundation has initiated a project to analyze the remains of over 200 Unknowns that are associated with those lost during the Battle of Okinawa, known as the “Last Battle” that occurred during the waning months of World War II.\u00a0 Over 1,000 service members are unaccounted for from this incident.\u00a0 An current estimate has been made of\u00a0 over 500 missing American servicemen who could have possibly been buried as an “Unknown” in eight military cemeteries on the Island of Okinawa.<\/p>\n
The first step of the Battle of Okinawa “Unknown” Project began with an effort to obtain copies of the “Unknown X Files” of those who were buried after the battle and whose identity could not be determined.\u00a0 The X-Files are the most important part of the project so that Foundation researchers can build the first phase of a comprehensive database of potential matches to the “Unknowns” from those that are still listed as “Missing in Action.”\u00a0 This part of the project has now been completed.<\/p>\n
A comprehensive list of MIAs has been developed who could possibly be matched to one of the individual Okinawa cemeteries where the “Unknowns” were buried.\u00a0 Foundation researchers have traveled to the National Archives in College Park, Maryland to obtain copies of the cemetery plot maps to help in the location and correlation of specific graves in each cemetery which originally held unidentified casualties from the battle.\u00a0 The U.S. Army and the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis, Missouri were of tremendous assistance to Foundation researchers in obtaining the “Individual Deceased Personnel Files” (IDPF) for the MIAs from Okinawa.\u00a0 This phase of the project has now been completed.<\/p>\n
The next step is to now obtain the “Official Military Personnel File” (OMPF) service files from the NPRC to build a biometric database of each MIA for comparison to the biometrics recorded by forensic anthropologists for the “Unknowns” in the original X Files.\u00a0 This comparison is done by the Foundation’s computerized “Random Incident Statistical Correlation” (RISC) System, which has an over 90% success rate in predicting “Possible, Probable, and Most Likely Matches” to “Unknowns.”<\/p>\n
NPRC has been working with the Foundation to produce the OMPFs requested but it will take time to obtain the crucial records.\u00a0 Once the\u00a0 Foundation has the records, an analysis by the RISC System can be performed very, very quickly and the results provided to family members upon request in a matter of days.<\/p>\n
The Foundation has worked on many projects like this one in the past, such as the Battle of Tarawa, Pearl Harbor, and the USS Indianapolis<\/em> Project, that resulted in the reclassification by the US Navy of 13 sailors who had been officially MIA since 1945 to “Buried at Sea” and the resultant closure to their families.<\/p>\n Soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines\u00a0 fought heroically for months against a determined and skillful enemy on Okinawa.\u00a0 The Foundation’s mission is to restore their names and identifications to a burial plot that now only reads “Unknown.”<\/p>\n If you are a family member of a lost hero from the Battle of Okinawa, please use the “Leave A Reply” form below to contact us.\u00a0 Include your Name, Email Address, and the name of your missing family member.<\/p>\n Your contact information will NOT be posted on-line.<\/p>\n Copyright (C) 2012-2026 by the Chief Rick Stone & Family Charitable Foundation. All Rights Reserved.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Chief Rick Stone and Family Charitable Foundation has initiated a project to analyze the remains of over 200 Unknowns that are associated with those lost during the Battle of Okinawa, known as the “Last Battle” that occurred during the waning months of World War II.\u00a0 Over 1,000 service members are unaccounted for from … Continue reading “The Battle of Okinawa “Unknown” Project”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-129241","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chiefrickstone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/129241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chiefrickstone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chiefrickstone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chiefrickstone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chiefrickstone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=129241"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.chiefrickstone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/129241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129828,"href":"https:\/\/www.chiefrickstone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/129241\/revisions\/129828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chiefrickstone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=129241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}