World War II

A few years ago I read and greatly enjoyed a book by Conrad Anker entitled The Lost Explorer: Finding Mallory on Mt. Everest. Mallory went missing in 1924 and his body lay undiscovered until 1999. At the time I wondered why they took him down from the mountain after 75 years. In fact I still do. The man died doing what he loved and it would probably be hard to find a more peaceful, undisturbed place to spend eternity.

Now, in an eerily reminiscent incident, a hiker in Kings Canyon National Park found the second set of World War II-era remains located in the park in two years. The remains were found within 100 yards of one another and both were airmen. The second man is probably a member of the crew of the same plane on which 22-year-old Leo Mustonen served. His body was found in October 2005.

The flight, a training run in an AT-7 out of Mather Field in Sacramento got off course and wandered into a blizzard, crashing in the Sierra Nevadas on Mount Mendel, November 18, 1942. The body found this week was still wearing its parachute, neatly folded, the pull cord in place on his chest.

I looked up Mount Mendel. It’s isolated, windswept, and beautiful. For 65 years the as-yet-unidentified man has lain there undisturbed, just like Mallory on Everest. In both cases surviving family wanted a different kind of burial, something more formal. My father always said funerals are for the living. But the souls of Mallory and these missing airmen? Somehow I like to think they’re mountain spirits now.

WWII, AT-7, Mount Mendel, missing airman, Leo Mustonen

As always these stories about repatriated remains catch my eye. This time the crash site was near Nemesvita, a village in Hungary approximately 110 miles south and west of Budapest.

Staff Sgt. Martin F. Troy of Norwalk, Conn. was the tail gunner on a B-24H Liberator known as “Miss Fortune.” The plane flew a mission into Germany and headed back to base in Italy when a combination of bad weather and an encounter with Messerschmitt 110s sent it down on June 30, 1944.

A seven-man JPAC team (Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command) carried out the recovery. There wasn’t much left of the plane, just an engine and three prop blades.

JPAC is now attempting to locate Troy’s family. If no one is found, he could be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

(Click here for the article from Newsday.com.)

WWII, JPAC, Hungary, B-24, repatriated remains

Writing for the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune on July 19, Jeannine Aquino recounts a recent expedition to the jungles of Papua, New Guinea by a team of dedicated MIA hunters.

Three separate teams on three two-week trips searched for missing World War II crash sites in an effort to recover the remains of 60 American airmen missing 62 years.

A non-profit organization based in Minnesota and known simply as “MIA Hunters” makes it their mission to locate, recover, and bring home for burial these long-lost servicemen.

On this series of expeditions, eleven crash sites were located and potentially 38 American and 22 Japanese servicemen will finally be returned to their families.

There are still 78,000 servicemen listed as missing in action from World War II with about 70 percent of those in the Pacific Theatre of operations.

When the MIA Hunters find a site, they document its location, photograph the area, and leave identification markers. They then plan an American flag and offer a prayer for those who died there.

For more on the MIA Hunters, click here for their homepage.

MIA, Papua, New Guinea, MIA Hunters, Pacific Theater

In a tiny West Texas cemetery lies a grave covered in wildflowers. It is the resting place of Lt. William C. Bumgardner, Jr., my first cousin. He was a bombadier on a plane shot down in the South Pacific. The war had been over three years when his casket arrived at the train depot. Mother always said she knew there was nothing inside but some bones and a new uniform, but Junior was home and that was all that mattered.

Seventy-eight thousand of the boys who went to World War II aren’t home yet. In fact the motto of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command or JPAC is “Until They Are Home.” A recent story from The Salt Lake Tribune descibes a JPAC mission to Iowa Jima in search of Sgt. William Genaust, dead these 62 years, but still not home.

Yesterday Army Tech Sergeant Richard Ransom Sargent was laid to rest 63 years after his B-24 went down over New Guinea. His marker used to read “lost in New Guinea.” Now there’s a new line. “Honorably returned home July 7th, 2007.”

JPAC has the largest forensic anthropology laboratory in the world. They only have a staff of 425 and they rely on a lot of outside help from family, friends, and historians. They need eyewitness accounts and if possible, they need DNA from surviving relatives. If you or someone you know can contribute to the mission to bring the boys home, go to www.jpac.pacom.mil/Contact.htm. They’ve been “over there” long enough.

JPAC, POW, MIA, Iowa Jima, New Guinea, B-24, South Pacific