Individual Details

Family information provided by Hendreitta Jenson.
Rudolph joined the Navy quite young and had his name changed to his nickname, Duff Johnson. He retired from the Navy and lived with his wife Peggy in San Diego and worked in the Navy shipyards. He was called back in 1940 and was on the Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Duff Gordon
On his WWI Draft Registeration card he gives his name as Duff Gordon, age 28, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was born 28 Nov 1889 at Hudson, Wis. He is single, 70 1/2 inches tall, 164 pounds with blue eyes and brown hair. His occupation is coppersmith-U.S. Navy-4 years. A note on the back of the card "In Navy June 5, 1917."

Duff Gordon
in the U.S. World War II Navy Muster Rolls, 1938-1949
Ship, Station or Activity: Oklahoma
Ship Number or Designation: BB-37
Muster Date: 14 Oct 1940
Service No. 1613815
CMsmth (PA) F4D, USFR
Date of Enlistment: 16 Oct 1934
Place of Enlistment: San Diego, Calif.

Duff Gordon
in the U.S. WWII Military Personnel Missing In Action or Lost At Sea, 1941-1946
Date of Loss: 7 Dec 1941
Branch: U.S. Navy Reserves
Rank: CMP
Service number: 1613815
Status: Missing in Action

Duff Gordon
on the Punch Bowl Memorial is listed as a Chief Metalsmith, USNR, from California.

Duff Gordon
U.S., Navy Casualties Books, 1776-1941 (Ancestry.com; Original data: Various volumes. Washington, D.C.: Navy Department Library.)
GORDON, Duff, Chief Metalsmith, USN. Wife, Mrs. Mayme Gordon, 4736, Rolander Ave., San Diego, Calif.

HSO, 25 Dec 1941, p8
Duffy Johnson, Former Hudsonite, Lost in Hawaii Naval Attack
Duffy Gordon Johnson, a former resident of Hudson but in recent years a seaman in the U.S. Navy, is reported as missing in action following the Japanese attack on the Hawaiian islands. Dan Johnson of Pittsburgh, a brother of the missing man, relayed the naval department's message regarding his brother to City Clerk W.R. Foss.

{ In the immediate aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Navy personnel recovered and buried only four unknowns associated with the Oklahoma in Nuuanu Cemetery from December 8 through December 16, 1941. In addition to these unknowns, twenty-nine crew members of USS Oklahoma were identified and buried in either Nuuanu or Halawa Naval Cemetery during this same time frame. The vast majority of the unknown servicemen of the Oklahoma were recovered from the ship during salvaging operations. These recoveries, conducted initially by divers and salvaging crews as they prepared the Oklahoma for righting and continued once the ship had been re-floated, resulted in a total of fifty-two burials, representing approximately four hundred individuals. The recoveries began with the initiation of salvaging on 15 July 1942 and ended on 10 May 1944, with the majority of remains being removed from the ship after it had been righted. 
In September 1947, the American Graves Registration Service (AGRS) disinterred these two cemeteries and moved the remains to the Schofield Barracks Central Identification Laboratory (Schofield CIL), located at the AGRS Pacific Zone Headquarters, in order to effect or confirm identifications and return the men to their next of kin for burial (but was not done). The remains awaited final burial on the shelves of Schofield Mausoleum #2. By 1947, Congress and veteran organizations placed a great deal of pressure on the military to find a permanent burial site in Hawaii for the remains of thousands of World War II servicemen awaiting permanent burial. Subsequently, the Army again began planning the Punchbowl cemetery; in February 1948 Congress approved funding and construction began.The first interment was made Jan. 4, 1949.
By the spring of 1950, the approximately 390 unknowns from the USS Oklahoma had been buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in sixty-one caskets interred in forty-five Mass Grave locations. Including those dis-interned from the other local cemeteries to be interned all together in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. 

HSO, 14 Jan 2016
Pearl Harbor remains ID'd as those of Hudson man
By Doug Stohlberg 
Almost 75 years after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the remains of five U.S. sailors who perished when their battleship was sunk there have been identified. According to Pentagon source cited by both the Washington Post and Stars and Stripes, one of the sailors has been identified as Chief Petty Officer Duff Gordon, 52, of Hudson.
The five men, who were exhumed last year from their graves in Hawaii and examined in special military laboratories, were among 429 sailors and Marines killed when the USS Oklahoma was torpedoed and capsized. They had been buried as “unknowns.”
Little is know about Gordon’s background in Hudson, but his name was listed on a roll of honor billboard that stood in front of City Hall after the end of World War II. His name was one of 377 names on the board of Hudson men who served in World War II. He was not identified, however, as one of the 13 with a “gold star,” identifying those who had given their lives in World War II. The new information means that Hudson had 14 men who died in the conflict. The billboard was dismantled in 1950.
The Washington Post reported that “Gordon, at 52, was probably among the oldest sailors on the Oklahoma.”
Identifications came about through advances in forensic science and genealogical help from family members.
The other four identified were Chief Petty Officer Albert E. Hayden, 44, of Mechanicsville, Md.; Ensign Lewis S. Stockdale, 27, of Anaconda, Mont.; Seaman 2nd Class Dale F. Pearce, 21, of Labette County, Kan.; Petty Officer 1st Class Vernon T. Luke, 43, of Green Bay, Wis.
The 13 Hudson men originally identified as World War II casualties were: Charles W. Askov, Gerald Cowles, L. James Giullickson, Clyde R. Huddleson, Joseph Hughes, Gerald C. Johnson, Kenneth C. Kottke, Russell K. Luse, William F. Pfeiffer, Edward S. Rock, Russell N. Solheim, John W. Stayberg and Nathan Wiener.



{Dover DNA lab to help ID Pearl Harbor remains
 William H. McMichael, The News Journal9:03 a.m. EDT May 25, 2015
(Photo: U.S. Navy)
A gram of bone. If well-preserved and accompanied by the right genetic reference samples, it's enough to put a name and a face on an unknown soul thought lost to the ages.
In the coming months and years, experts in Dover and Hawaii will analyze nearly 400 such fragments, and the remains from which they're taken, as they launch a project with particular resonance this Memorial Day: identifying the sailors and Marines killed on Dec. 7, 1941, when Japanese attackers sank the USS Oklahoma. For the past 65 years, those remains have been buried as unknowns in graves at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.
The experts' work at two agencies with a long history of teaming up: the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory at Dover Air Force Base and the newly reorganized Defense POW/MIA Accountability Agency in Hawaii.
Preservation was an unlikely byproduct of the two years the fallen sailors and Marines spent in their watery grave before the ship was righted during a massive salvage operation. No one knew it at the time, but the skeletonized bodies that were recovered were exposed to leaking fuel oil that would protect the bones from micro-organisms, preserving the DNA.
"That has actually inhibited bacterial growth in the remains," said Debra Prince Zinni, a forensic anthropologist with the Defense POW/MIA Accountability Agency, or DPAA. "And the success rate in getting the DNA from the remains is extremely high."
The exhumations will begin in June, according to Navy Capt. Edward Reedy, a forensic pathologist and as DPAA's medical examiner, the Defense Department's top identification official for past conflicts.
Initially, officials will try to match remains with dental records. Anthropological comparisons will follow. A DNA technician will cut the bone samples to be sent to Dover, where scientists and technicians working in sealed, sterile labs at the Armed Forces DNA lab will examine them.
The DNA results will be returned to Hawaii, where all the research will be combined to provide positive identifications, and subsequent release of remains to surviving family members.
"This is a project that I've been working on for many, many years now," said Zinni, who grew up in Wilmington and attended Ursuline Academy, where she was a standout athlete. "And to see that there's finally going to be some movement toward the identification is really remarkable. It's very rewarding work. But more than that, it's actually very humbling to be able to help these families get answers."
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Many should. Between family reference DNA samples and dental records, officials have identifying information for about 88 percent of those unaccounted for, according to Tim McMahon, the Armed Forces DNA lab's deputy director for forensic services. Combined with advances in DNA science, he said they expect a high number of identifications.
"We expect that at least 80 percent ... will be individually identified," Zinni said.
In 2003, independent research convinced officials to unearth one casket of Oklahoma unknowns. Through the work of Zinni and others, five crewmen were identified, bringing the total recovered from the ship and unaccounted for to 388 (another Oklahoma sailor who'd been recovered from outside the ship and not buried with the ship's unidentified crewmen was identified in 2007).
Buy Photo
Ryan Moroney?, Evidence Custodian, works with evidence in the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory The Pentagon has ordered the exhumation of 388 unidentified sailors who died at Pearl Harbor aboard the battleship Oklahoma, and the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System DNA lab at Dover Air Force Base will have the job of identifying the remains. (Photo: JASON MINTO/THE NEWS JOURNAL)
Additional anthropological, dental and DNA analysis of the casket determined that it contained the sparse remains of more than 100 individuals. This prompted the Navy and Marine Corps to begin collecting reference samples from surviving family members.
In 2009, Congress, unhappy with the pace of positive identifications, mandated an increase to 200 missing service members annually by 2015. A year ago, then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered an overhaul of the process, merging the two organizations responsible for finding missing personnel from past conflicts into the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
The Navy didn't want the Oklahoma exhumation to happen. In a May 2014 letter to family members of the Oklahoma crew, obtained and published by Stars and Stripes, a senior Navy official argued that "the sailors and Marines of USS Oklahoma would be outside the sanctity of the grave for a third time following their heroic sacrifice at Pearl Harbor." It would also be a drawn-out process, the official wrote, and "many" would likely remain unaccounted for.
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Last month, the Pentagon overruled. Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work, citing advances in forensic science and extensive family member participation in the collection of reference samples, ordered the project to begin and be completed within five years. He also ordered the disinterment of the remains of all unknowns in all permanent U.S. military cemeteries, given certain criteria.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 73 years ago was timed to catch the U.S. Navy on a sleepy Sunday morning. Shortly before 8 a.m., Japanese aircrews attacked, zeroing in on the eight battleships in port, seven of them parked in a row alongside Ford Island. Three air-launched torpedoes struck the Oklahoma, which was moored outboard of the USS Maryland. Multiple torpedo hits followed, ripping open Oklahoma's port side.
According to the Maryland's deck log, the 583-foot battleship began capsizing at 8:10 a.m. It was one of eight battleships – and 21 vessels, all told – sunk or badly damaged. Another 188 aircraft were destroyed and 2,403 Americans were killed.
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Jennie McMahon is a Supervisory DNA Analyst with the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory at Dover Air Force Base. The Pentagon has ordered the exhumation of 388 unidentified sailors who died at Pearl Harbor aboard the battleship Oklahoma, and the lab will analyze DNA samples from the remains to help identify them. (Photo: JASON MINTO/THE NEWS JOURNAL)
Thirty-two crewmen were rescued from the overturned Oklahoma by civilian shipyard crews who struggled to cut through the bottom of the ship with pneumatic hammers and torches. A total of 429 crew members were killed – none from Delaware – and most were recovered from the ship during salvage operations, from July 1942 to May 1944.
Of those, 36 were positively identified and buried, leaving 393 buried in two Navy cemeteries until September 1947, when all were disinterred and moved to the Army's Central Identification Laboratory.
The bones had been "generally commingled." At the time, the only accepted way to identify skeletonized remains was through dental records, and 27 exhumed crewmen were identified in this way. Official arguments over whether or not to present a skull to a family without other associated remains, however, ended the effort. By 1950, all were buried in 61 caskets, interred in 45 locations, at the national cemetery in Honolulu, known as "The Punchbowl."
Beginning next month, the remains will again be exhumed. Four to six stainless steel caskets will arrive at the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency at any one time. Each will have a technician and scientist removing the remains, wrapped in green wool Army blankets, and cleaning them for examination.
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Forensic dentists will examine the skulls and most likely make the first identifications, Zinni said. Positive matches to dental records will be considered as positive IDs, and families will be notified and given the choice to either accept the fragments or wait for further post-cranial identification that could associate other portions of the skeleton with that sailor or Marine.
Meanwhile, a DNA technician will cut the bone samples to be sent to Dover. The minimum required size is 0.8 grams, but Reedy said the agency usually sends about twice that amount. Ninety percent of a body's bones will yield testable amounts of DNA; the best samples are taken from the densest bones, such as femurs, according to Reedy.
Photograph from a Japanese plane of Battleship Row at the beginning of the attack. The USS Oklahoma (center, front row of battleships, outboard of the USS Maryland) was sunk within 20 minutes. (Photo: NATIONAL ARCHIVES)
Human cells with a nucleus contain two forms of DNA: nuclear and mitochondrial. Every nucleated cell has a single nucleus, and people get half of the nuclear DNA from their mother and half from their father, making newer samples typically easy to identify.
There's far more mitochondrial DNA in a single cell, increasing the chances of successful identification in older remains – if analysts have reference samples from the maternal line.
At Dover, the samples are completely cleaned by analysts wearing lab coats, gloves and masks, then taken under clear hoods, where the outer layers of the bones are sanded off, washed and ground into a fine powder. A "demineralization buffer" the lab developed and introduced in 2006 reduces the amount of bone powder needed to get results to 0.1 grams, and dissolves the bone completely, allowing analysts to track any trace of either nuclear or mitochondrial DNA, McMahon said.
What's left is a liquid composed of the DNA and any cellular waste generated during this extraction process. This is then purified, then "amplified" to allow analysts to generate the large amounts of DNA required for testing, he said.
The demineralization process, a further advance in DNA testing technology, has now been adopted by labs worldwide, Reedy said.
"With the advances ... we have a very high success rate," McMahon said.
To confirm the findings, the entire process is duplicated; two separate samples are initially extracted, and assigned to two different teams. "The answers have to match for us to report it out to the DPAA lab," McMahon said. "We're dealing with highly degraded samples. So the chance of having a modern contaminant is increased."
Former Delawarean and Ursuline Academy alumna Debra Prince Zinni, a forensic anthropologist with the Defense POW/MIA Accountability Agency, or DPAA. (Photo: Submitted)
Back in Hawaii, the anthropologists attempt to piece together the skeletal remains in an effort to find matches. Anthropologists measure the bones and generate statistical probabilities that some belong to the same person; determine how well bones fit with one another at the joints; and develop biological profiles of the remains to determine age, ancestry and so forth.
This task – trying to retrofit the commingled skeletal remains of nearly 400 individuals – is less onerous than it sounds, because there's less similarity between like bones than one might think.
"It is amazing how different bones can be," Zinni said. "The shapes, the densities, the robustness, the length." Proper fits will preclude the need to test each bone for DNA, Zinni said. It's both a cost-saving effort and a way to further substantiate the other findings.
Once a positive identification has been made, DPAA in Hawaii will notify the casualty assistance officer assigned to a fallen service member's survivors. The next step – whether they want to wait for further remains identification, for instance – is up to them.
"It's the right thing to do," Reedy said. "Everyone deserves a name, everyone deserves to go home. And that's what really drives me, personally – is this moral and ethical obligation I have to return service members who gave their lives in defense of our country, to their loved ones."
"It's a very sacred mission," McMahon said.
Officials would like to identify every bone. But, said Zinni, "The reality is there probably will be group remains identified at the end of the process." Those will be buried together, she said.
A memorial to the 429 crew members who were killed stands on Ford Island, just outside the entrance to the Battleship Missouri Memorial. The Missouri was the last battleship ever commissioned; the Japanese surrendered on its decks on Sept. 2, 1945. It is moored on the spot where the Oklahoma was sunk.
The battleship Oklahoma is gone forever. Two years after being raised, the Navy sold the patched-up ship for scrap to a California salvage company, which began towing the battleship to Oakland in the spring of 1947. On May 17, about a fifth of the trip complete, the ship began listing to port – the same side that had been so heavily damaged. The tow lines were cut, and the Oklahoma sank to the ocean floor.
Contact William H. McMichael at (302) 324-2812 or bmcmichael@delawareonline.com. On Twitter: @billmcmichael.

Birth	28 Nov 1889	Hudson, St. Croix County, Wisconsin
Occupation	1920	Sailor, Age 30, Single - Enumerated with Military & Naval Forces, USS Savannah Dist., Boston, Mass., Boston, Mass.
Marriage	2 Feb 1931	Methodist Minister, Long Beach, Los Angles, CA - Mayme Berry
Occupation	1940	Pipefitter on Marine base - San Diego, San Diego, Calif.
Death	7 Dec 1941	Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
Burial	1950 - 2015	Natinal Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, "the Punchbowl", Honolulu, Hawaii
Alt name		Duff Gordon

Spouse

Mayme Berry (1879 - 1959)

Father	Olaus Johnson (1849 - 1913)
Mother	Karoline Hendriette Hanson (1851 - 1897)
Sibling	George Hans Johnson ( - 1927)
Sibling	Albert S. Johnson (1878 - 1951)
Sibling	Christian Johnson (1880 - 1922)
Sibling	Olga Louise Johnson (1883 - )
Sibling	Daniel Victor Johnson (1886 - 1965)
Sibling	Hilma Johnson (1887 - 1905)
Sibling	Ferdinand Johnson ( - 1924)

Notes