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Serviceman Classified As Missing In Action

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from World War II, have been identified and returned to his family for burial tomorrow with full military honors.

Seaman 2nd Class Dee Hall, of Syra, Okla. He is to be buried at the Ft. Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio. Hall was one of seven crewmen aboard a U.S. Navy PBY-5 Catalina that took off from Kodiak Island, Alaska on June 14, 1942, to attack Japanese targets in Kiska Harbor, Alaska. The crew encountered inclement weather and heavy Japanese anti-aircraft fire near the target. Their plane crashed on the Japanese-held Kiska Island, Alaska with all seven crewmen on board.

In August 1943, the United States retook Kiska Island from the Japanese. Wreckage of the PBY-5 was found on the side of Kiska volcano. The remains of the crew were buried in a common grave marked "Seven U.S.N. Airmen” with a wooden marker. Following the war, attempts to locate the common grave were unsuccessful and the remains of all seven were declared to be non-recoverable.

In 2002, a wildlife biologist notified DPMO that he had found the wreckage of a World War II aircraft on the slope of Kiska volcano. Using that information, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) excavated the crash site in August 2003 and found debris from the PBY-5 as well as crew-related items. The JPAC team also located the wooden marker as well as the remains buried nearby. Subsequent JPAC laboratory analysis led to the individual identification of all seven crewmembers. Of the 88,000 unaccounted-for Americans from all conflicts, 78,000 are from World War II.

World War II Navy Seaman MIA Identified. Department Of Defense. December 15, 2005.

Previously 'Unknown' Pearl Harbor Victim Reburied With Full Honors

A once-unidentified sailor killed in the Pearl Harbor attack almost 65 years ago was laid to rest today with full honors and a grave marker bearing his name, thanks to sleuth work by a Pearl Harbor survivor and U.S. Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command's expertise.

Seaman 2nd Class Warren Paul Hickok was reinterred this morning at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, more commonly called the Punchbowl. The 18-year-old Kalamazoo, Mich., native had been among more than 1,500 sailors, soldiers, Marines and civilians killed during the Dec. 7, 1941, attack but never identified.

Hickok was assigned to the light mine layer USS Sicard when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. According to defense officials, many Sicard crewmembers had been dispatched at the time to help the crew of USS Cummings, a destroyer docked nearby. The Cummings got under way and cleared Pearl Harbor after the attack and reported no injuries.

An investigation into those still unaccounted-for determined that Hickok may have been among the Sicard crewmen aboard USS Pennsylvania during the attack. However, he was not among those reported lost, officials said. In the days following the attack, the unidentified dead, including a sailor identified only as "X-2," were buried in Nuuanu Cemetery in Oahu, Hawaii. Years later, after World War II ended, the Army Graves Registration Service disinterred the remains and attempted to identify them.

Those that couldn't be identified, including "X-2's," were reburied at the Punchbowl on June 9, 1949, defense officials said. About 1,000 others are interred aboard USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor. This might have been the end of the story, except for the detective work of Ray Emory, a Pearl Harbor survivor and researcher who has spent the past 12 years trying to help match names to unknowns.

Emory, a sailor assigned to USS Honolulu during the attack, calls his effort a labor of love to help honor the memories of those who died and to bring closure to their families. "I'll be doing this to my dying day," said the 84-year-old Hawaii resident.

He scrubs deceased servicemembers' military records, most obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, looking for details that link them to those unidentified from the Pearl Harbor attack. "You usually need five or six documents to put the puzzle together,' he said, calling the effort "a lot like chess."

As in many of the other cases he investigates, dental and medical records offered the critical clues in linking the unknown sailor designated as "X-2" to Hickok, he said. When he thought he was on to something, Emory said, he contacted JPAC, which found his evidence convincing enough to exhume the grave last June.

The Defense Department announced the successful identification Dec. 16, 2005. Emory said he gets a huge lift by helping to piece together an unsolved case. "You don't know how good it feels to get a call from JPAC saying, 'You've done it again," he said. But the biggest reward, he said, is being able to call family members and tell them that their loved one has been identified.

In the Hickok case, tracking down his only living survivor took a bit of detective work, too, Emory said. Failing to locate them through a records search, he contacted the Kalamazoo newspaper, which ran an article about the successful identification and the attempt to locate Hickok's sister. The article made its way to the Internet, and eventually Hickok was able to make contact with Marilyn "Kay" Woodring, now living in Florida. "To acknowledge the commitments of the dead, we also recognize the loss incurred by their family and friends and, while we can never return their loved one, we can offer them the solace that comes with knowing what happened and being able to bury them," she said. "We recommit ourselves to a national sentiment that we will not leave our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines behind and we won't forget their sacrifice."

Compiled from Defense Department and Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command releases and an interview by American Forces Press Service. March 29, 2006

WWI Soldier

Eighty-eight years after being killed in action along the not-so-quiet Western Front of World War I, Army Pvt. Francis Lupo of Cincinnati was buried today with military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Lupo is the first U.S. servicemember classified as missing in action from World War I to be identified. "Based on our search of the records, this appears to be the first (WWI Soldier) ever that was missing in action, found and returned home,” said Larry Greer, spokesman for the Pentagon’s Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office, which leads the national effort to account for personnel missing as the result of hostile action. "No one would have ever thought that he could have possibly been found, but he was found.”

Lupo’s casket was carried by horse-drawn caisson through the cemetery today before receiving a 21-gun salute. Lupo’s next-of-kin, Rachel Kleisinger, 73, was presented with an American flag during the burial ceremony. Kleisinger is Lupo’s niece. She was born to Lupo’s youngest sister 15 years after the end of WWI. Several French military officers were also in attendance.

Lupo, the son of Sicilian immigrants, was 23 years old when he was killed in July 1918 while participating in the combined French-American attack on the Germans near Soissons, France, in what came to be known as the Second Battle of the Marne. Lupo was buried in a shallow grave alongside another American Soldier. Lupo was a member of Company E, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division.

In 2003, while conducting a survey in preparation for a construction project, a French archaeological team discovered human remains and other items a short distance from Soissons. Among the items recovered were a military boot fragment and a wallet bearing Lupo's name, DoD officials said.

The French handed over the remains and personal effects to U.S. officials in 2004. They were then brought to the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii, to begin the analysis and official identification process. "It’s our mission at JPAC to identify all those missing from our nation’s past wars,” said Troy Kitch, JPAC deputy director of public affairs.

The command was activated Oct. 1, 2003, created from the merger of the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory and the Joint Task Force Full Accounting. The laboratory portion of JPAC, referred to as the Central Identification Laboratory, is the largest forensic anthropology laboratory in the world, officials said.

Kitch explained that the command uses several methods to positively identify people. They look at material evidence, such as the Lupo’s wallet, as well as anthropological evidence found in bones to identify basic traits like height, sex and age. "We look at mitochondrial DNA, which will tell us if that person is related to other people in a family line,” Kitch said. "We take a sample of DNA from the remains, and we try to match that up with a family reference sample of someone we think is a family member of the person.”

They also use historical evidence to demonstrate that the person being identified "was in that area at that time in that point in history,” Kitch said. "We also look at dental.” Teeth are often the best way to identify remains because they are durable, unique to each person and may contain surviving mitochondria DNA, the JPAC Web site states.

On average, JPAC identifies about six missing-in-action servicemembers each month. To date, the U.S. government has identified about 1,300 people. "As of the end of last year, we had identified about 840 people from Southeast Asia (Vietnam-era), about 50 or so from the Korean War, about 360 from World War II, and around 60 from the Cold War,” Kitch said.

Forty-nine Americans were listed as prisoners of war or missing in action during the 1991 Gulf War. DoD has now accounted for 48 of those 49. Only one American from Operation Desert Storm, Navy Capt. Michael "Scott" Speicher, remains unaccounted for. In addition, Army Sgt. Matt Maupin, who participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom, has been missing in action in Iraq since April 2004.

World War I, which lasted from August 1914 to November 1918, involved many European countries, the United States and other nations throughout the world. More than 10 million people were killed and more than 20 million wounded during the war. The United States initially remained neutral, but finally entered the war in 1917 on the side of the Allied powers.

During the course of the war, the United States lost 116,000 troops to combat or illness. According to a recent Washington Post article, about 4,500 of those killed are unaccounted for. The other Soldier buried with Lupo is among them. Only about 12 U.S. WWI veterans are still alive.

Greer stressed that even though the recovery and identification process may take years to complete, the U.S. is committed to identifying all of its missing troops. Lupo’s story is a case in point, he said. "I think it shows for those who wear the uniform, that this nation is committed to bringing them home even if it takes 60, 70, 80 years,” he said. "He (Lupo) was brought back and identified by our scientists and now returned to his family here on this hallowed ground at Arlington cemetery.”

Steven Donald Smith. Missing WWI Soldier buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Army News Service. September 27, 2006.

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