WWII remains return after 60 years

By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer

Laboratory specialists will continue the preliminary analysis Monday that may lead to identification of remains of World War II servicemen recovered in Myanmar and brought back to the United States this week.

A body found in the wreckage of a transport plane that crashed in Burma during World War II arrived yesterday at Hickam Air Force Base. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

determine the best technology for identifying them. Dental analysis can be done in Hawai'i, while a type of DNA analysis would be done in Maryland, said Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara, the command's public affairs chief.

The focus yesterday was on bringing the war dead back to U.S. soil after 60 years. The first set of remains are believed to be those of a crew of seven whose U.S. Army Air Force C-47 transport plane crashed during an air supply flight between Dinjan, India, and Myitkyina, Burma, now Myanmar, in 1944.

The remains arrived at Hickam along with a second set of World War II remains turned over by the Burmese government — only the second repatriation of war dead from Burma since 1951.

The cavernous hangar, with a few hundred uniformed and civilian onlookers gathered and flags of every military service fluttering in the morning breeze, is not the most intimate setting for a homecoming.

But members of the command hope investigators' continued work eventually will confirm the names of the lost servicemen and bring closure to the families they left behind.

"The hardest part is finding the families," O'Hara said. "In World War II cases, and some in Korea, it's a big hurdle."

O'Hara said the command has family DNA samples from only 40 percent of the nation's missing war dead to assist in identification. He encouraged any family with loved ones lost in a war to learn how to submit samples through the command's Web site, www.jpac.pacom.mil.

An honor guard marched the caskets about 50 yards to the bus that later transported them to the laboratory, which identifies more than 100 bodies per year.

Although the burden of identifying World War II missing is overwhelming — about 78,000 Americans from that conflict are still not accounted for — planes flew lower and slower then, leaving more clues in the wreckage, O'Hara said.

The most recent Myanmar investigation began in November, and a recovery team brought out the remains this month from a crash site about 15 miles northwest of Myitkyina, said command spokeswoman Ginger Couden.

Not much is certain about the second set of remains, O'Hara said, because the command is still examining information provided by the Burmese.

The command has teams now in Laos and Papua New Guinea and expects to send others in the next few weeks to North Korea, O'Hara said. The next repatriation ceremony, expected to occur within a month, will honor any remains recovered there, he said.

Negotiations are still under way to enter North Korea, but the teams are asking to enter the vicinity of Unsan and the Chosin Reservoir, O'Hara said.

He added that this was the sixth ceremony held since the command's reorganization in October. It comprises the former Joint Task Force Full Accounting and the Army's Central Identification Laboratory, Hawai'i.

Other remains have been brought back from Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, O'Hara said.

The ceremonies are attended by an Air Force unit assigned to pay honor to the servicemen, as well as the command unit and veteran groups such as Vietnam Veterans of America Oahu Chapter 858.

O'Hara pointed out another regular at these rites.

"That's Nick Nishimoto, who was a POW in Korea," he said. "He's here every time."

O'Hara said members of the command feel a loyalty to their mission.

"Sometimes we don't recover remains at a site, but there is other information," he said. "We have actually found zippers in Vietnam that were associated with a survival kit on an ejection seat associated with a certain aircraft. That would tell us that the serviceman didn't eject.

"We can determine that a crash wasn't survivable," he said. "The case isn't closed if we don't find remains, but it's answers that the families never had before, that the families have been waiting years to hear."

Bringing closure to families is one of the satisfying aspects to command duty, which for mobile teams involves being on the road more than 200 days of the year.

"You'd think that with all that time away from families, people wouldn't want to stay in the command," O'Hara said. "But our people don't want to leave."

Reach Vicki Viotti at vviotti@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8053.