News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: After 50 Years Family Wants Remains

Date: June 01, 2000

Fifty-five years ago a letter sent to a brother, fighting far away during World War II, was returned, unopened. The brother, 23 year-old 2LT Harvey Bos had gone missing along with two others and their C-46 aircraft on 9 JAN 46... somewhere between India and China. His crewmates, 2LT Ray C. Taylor and PVT Robert L. Crowde.

The family waited... and waited. No memorial, no monument, they waited for Harvey to come home as so many had and did during World War II. Yet, so many others didin't, and Harvey joined the legion of the lost from WW II that numbers over 78,000.

All these years ater, the family still waits and hopes. They believe they have foundHarvey's grave at the American Cemetery in Manila.. buried as an unknown, in unmarked graves may lie Harvey and his two crewmates, in eyesight of their names engraved upon the Tablets of the Missing.

The family found military documents that said - " the remains of the three crewmen were believed to have been recovered ``unidentified'' from Lien San Po Mountain in western China and buried in China's Kunming Cemetery as unknowns in November 1945. The bodies later were evacuated during the communist takeover to the Remains Depot in Shanghai, and then moved and reburied by 1947 in the Manila cemetery." The report recommended ``further research be made on unknowns X-818 through X-820 (grave markers) to determine whether these remains are those of the crew members."

The USG is apparently finding new ways to stonewall family members as the Director for Mortuary and Casulaty Affairs in Hawaii is not returning phone calls. Enter two Senators who intervened on the family's behalf requesting exhumation of the grave and mtDNA testing. And the family of Bos continues to push for resolution and the recovery of his remains so they may bring him home.

In the interim, the Bos family paid for flowers to be placed on the unmarked graves in the American Cemetery in Manila, so that the unknown and unmarked, would, indeed be remembered this Memorial Day. Said Bos' sister, ``One of my dad's last requests was for a headstone to be placed on one of these grave sites to be ready for when Harvey came home,'' ``If he comes home, I'll bury him there and tell him to rest in peace. He deserves that much.''