William was missing, but he was not alone. Navy personnel spent more than two years uprighting the USS Oklahoma before they could begin getting at the remains. By that time it was difficult to do any identification.
The remains were buried together at the Halawa and Nu'uana cemeteries.
Those remains were later transferred to 46 plots at the National Cemetery of the Pacific, known as the Punchbowl. In 2015, DPAA started exhuming the remains for analysis using DNA.
Ted Hummel said that he had first been contacted by the DPAA about five and a half years ago. Hummel provided them with his DNA, some of his mother's from her locket of hair from the family Bible.
They identified his uncle.
William Francis Hellstern was buried at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Wheat Ridge next to his sister, Ted's mother. Hellstern also has a marker in Illinois, but the family decided to bury his with his sister.
Again, What a Great Thing the Government Is Doing. --GreGen
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