News-Info-Alerts

Re: 57 Year Remains Mystery

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: August 03, 2002

"Forensic efforts fail to shed light on mystery of skull

By Mark Oliva, Stars and StripesPacific edition, Wednesday, July 31, 2002

CAMP LESTER — The U.S. Naval Hospital is holding a 57-year mystery: Whose skull does Dr. Green have?

It seems no one knows whose skull it is that in storage of the U.S. Naval Hospital on Okinawa. It’s more than 57 years old, has been in hospital officials’ custody for more then two years and is no closer than ever to being sent to a final resting place.

“We would like to do the right thing and repatriate the skull if they deem it is the right thing to do,” said Navy Capt. Jimmy Green, Armed Forces Medical Examiner here.

“They” are State Department officials at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. Green said the officials planned to repatriate the skull during the G8 summit on Okinawa two years ago, coinciding with President Bill Clinton’s visit. But it never happened.

“Someone either in the State Department or the president’s staff decided there wasn’t enough evidence to determine the skull was that of a Japanese soldier,” Green explained. Then, “the G8 was over and interest waned.”

Two years later, Embassy officials say they don’t know what he’s talking about.

“We have no information on this story,” said Patrick Linehan, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. “We don’t remember anything like that being discussed around that time.”

That’s despite a Stars and Stripes report on May 29, 2000, about the skull’s return to Okinawa.

Linehan said the concern was that of U.S. Forces Japan, not the State Department.

The whole episode came to light more than two years ago when Illinois State Police recovered a human skull from Lake Springfield near Springfield, Ill.

The area was treated as a crime scene until one family stepped forward. The skull, it turned out, was a relic brought back from WWII Pacific campaigns by a former Navy corpsman.

Jeremy Rupp, now 20, found the skull in an old box belonging to his grandfather, who, the family said, found it on a Pacific Island beach and kept it as a memento of war, hiding it in a trunk.

Rupp retrieved and displayed the skull, but he eventually grew anxious over having a human skull in his room and threw it into the nearby lake.

The skull was examined by an Illinois state pathologist and subjected to a computer scan to determine its origin. It belonged to a man in his 30s or 40s who suffered a wound, possibly fatal, to the left temple.

The scan also determined to a 65-70 percent possibility that the skull belonged to a person of Japanese descent.

The forensic findings, along with the family’s statements to the police, paved the way for the skull to be returned to Okinawa, one of the islands on which Rupp’s grandfather was stationed.

Officials at the U.S. Naval Hospital received the skull in late April 2000, and immediately set to cleaning it, said Navy Capt. Jimmy Green, Armed Forced Medical Examiner here.

Since then, the artifact has not left the hospital. It sits with all other forensic tissue; in another year, it will be destroyed. Green said all tissue samples collected for forensic purposes are held for three years.

There will be one final review of the case; if no further evidence or guidance surfaces, the skull will be disposed of as biomedical waste.

© 2002 Stars and Stripes"