Re: Lost Pilots of the Pacific - A 5 Part Report

Date: April 24, 2004

"Lost Pilots Of The Pacific

A CBS 2 Special Report in 5 Parts

The search goes on for the Lost Pilots of the Pacific,
Lou Young reports. Part 1

Feb 9, 2004 8:15 pm US/Eastern

It is a sad fact that many killed in war are never found. They are the America's MIAs and some, like the lost pilots of the Pacific, have been missing for sixty years. CBS 2's Lou Young reports on the effort to find these missing airmen.

You probably thought the books were closed on the missing combat pilots of World War II, but not so. The search goes on literally a half a world away in the pacific islands of Palau. Young spent two weeks with one the American military teams searching for these lost airmen.

"Most of them were beheaded. That was the preferred form of execution," explains Archeologist Bill Belcher. His words chill the thick tropical air of Palau even though the killing he speaks of happened 60 years ago.
A savage time at the end of World War II. We are on the far side of the Pacific in a place still haunted by it's ghosts.

All that's left of the two armies that struggled here are rusted remnants of war machines and the bones of the dead. The American bodies the military team is looking for were never meant to be found.

"The problem with is, on the night of the Japanese surrender, the Japanese came in here, exhumed the graves and cremated the bodies and disposed of them elsewhere. What we're hoping to find is find the original graves, and find any small bones or artifacts they may have left behind," Belcher says.

The U.S. airmen believed to have been killed here are among 88,000 Americans officially listed as missing around the world, 28,000 in the Pacific alone.
Many, even in the military, are unaware of the massive effort now underway to find those lost warriors, searches that are expensive and time consuming.

"We're looking for anything out of the ordinary," says Bill Young.

The search team we met consists of eight members of the American military lead by a civilian scientist.

They were sent from Hawaii by the Joint U.S. Military Command, charged with accounting for those who vanish in battle. In this unit sailors, soldiers, Marines and Air Force all work together, with civilian professionals in a labor of the heart.

"This country has got a blood debt to pay. We're looking for somebody's brother, somebody's father, somebody's husband. And those people haven't been forgotten," says Dr. Thomas Holland from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command.

What the searchers find will be brought back to the largest forensic laboratory in the world, a place where scientists labor to identify human remains, on sometimes shockingly scant evidence.

"That's the size of what we're probably going to find here. So it is a needle in a haystack but we do the best we can," Belcher said, holding something the size of a pebble.

The natives of Palau grew up with remnants of our war. Bones found in the jungle are common here. America's interest so many years later in finding them is a source of curiosity.

"Why to they look for the little bones?" Shaft Katosang asked. "They want to bring them home," Young answered. "That is pretty nice, pretty sure the spirit won't rest until you put it in a right place for it," Katosang responded.

With this team, we will pick through battlefields left largely untouched since the war, step around live shells and rusting guns and dive down to the underwater wreck of a fighter plane, it's cockpit driven into the mud and coral and try to unlock the tragic history the killing place on the hill.

The three airmen from that mass grave were part of a B-24 crew. They parachuted out and were captured. The other seven, it's thought, are still in the wreckage somewhere on the island.


Lost Pilots Of The Pacific:
A Witness Remembers, Lou Young reports. Part 2

Feb 10, 2004 7:00 pm US/Eastern

Military investigators spent the last few weeks looking for the wartime grave of three missing airmen. The search was conducted on a World War II battleground far out in the Pacific. CBS 2's Lou Young reports.

The men vanished and were presumed dead 60 years ago in the last months of World War II. But how did it happen?

Investigators have theories but no proof. But in the Pacific island nation of Palau they have a witness willing to help them.

The witness hates to relive the horrors on this windswept hilltop but knows the Americans need help.

The military team has been at work for more than a week here, peeling away topsoil in search of graves.

It's believed three captured U.S. airmen were killed by their Japanese captors 60 years ago, along with several priests and missionaries.

Gunnery Sgt. Ian Denny of Jamaica, Queens, is one of searchers. "To me, it's amazing to think how the troops fought in this jungle, hard to imagine, so long ago," he told Young.

So long ago, witnesses are hard to come by. The team began digging here largely because Katarina Kantosa told them this was the place.

Katarina's was no casual observation.

She was a teenager. She says one of the priests was like a brother to her.

And she says she marked the graves herself, adding that the airmen were buried nearby.

But it's hard. Japanese houses and government buildings vanished in Napalm-fed fires. Palau as an imperial colony had more than double the population it has today.

Dr. Pat Scannon is a private researcher trying to help unlock the mysteries of Palau by re-constructing events many have tried to bury or forget. "By the time the executions happened the war was essentially over. The Japanese were trying to cover their bases."

The execution site is up on a hill, but all around there's the wreckage of Japanese vehicles that were bombed and hit by American planes as the war drew to a close.

Ironically, the rusting hulks of military trucks you see were vehicles bought from Detroit before the war, Fords fire-bombed from Grumman aircraft.

Katarina sees it all through a young girl's eyes and tries to re-build the scene in her mind. She says it doesn't look exactly right.

The effort unravels as she walks past the excavation site that yielded no evidence of graves and stares out onto the hillside. Wanting to remember, perhaps too much.
"She was helpful in that she tried to help, but she really doesn't remember anymore," says Archeologist Bill Belcher. When asked what they would have to do next to find that grave, he answered "Dig up the entire hillside and we're not prepared to do that."
Eventually it may take a larger excavation to solve the mystery but the team has more promising targets.

Lost Pilots of the Pacific: Finding Wreckage.
Lou Young reports. Part 3.

Feb 11, 2004 8:58 pm US/Eastern

The U.S. military recently consolidated it's worldwide effort to account for all American MIAs and has now intensified missions to recover the remains of its lost pilots in the Pacific theater of World War II. CBS 2's Lou Young reports.

The fallen servicemen were never really forgotten but the government always seemed to have other priorities. It was the intense effort to recover MIAs from Vietnam that underscored just how many Americans had never really come home from our others wars.

Young followed a joint military team into a jungle battlefield in search of a U.S. plane, pilot and crew, lost on the far side of the Pacific.

Six decades after the American invasion, Palau's southernmost island remains a special slice of hell. Peleliu is just about as far from New York as you can get without leaving the planet.

A thick jungle, the air heavy with heat and humidity, the ground is littered with equipment where it fell in the heat of battle.

In a cave, Young found a stack of boot soles and a belt, and a few yards away a disintegrating Japanese helmet. An ammo box reminded everyone of the need to be very careful.

The team's explosives expert, SSGT. Kevin Pospisil used pale blue ribbon to mark unexploded mortar and artillery shells that could still mame or kill a person in a flash.
"That's the kind of ordinance we're running into. It's World War II. It's sensitive and that's why we mark it out. As long as you don't touch it it's good to go. Be nice to it it'll be nice to you," he told Young.

The wreckage the team is looking for is on a steep hillside. The landing gear was about halfway up the hill, and the key portion of the aircraft the search crew was looking for was on top of the hill.

The aircraft was a TBM Avenger, which was used as a glide bomber. It's the same kind of plane former President Bush flew during the war.

It carried a lot of ordinance but it was kind of slow. The aircraft on the hill showed the tell-tale signs of a fierce battle, riddled with bullet holes.

It nosed in right into the island and it is presumed the remains of the crew are near the wreckage.

The plane's tail was found nearly a half mile away and the numbers identified it as the Avenger the team had been looking for.

On the way in, the team had been joking and laughing, but everyone turned quiet and somber as they approached the site. There were three Americans on board and two are still unaccounted for.

"They found the other airman. They identified him by the nametag on his flight suit because his head was missing," explains Pat Scannon from the Bent Prop Project.

Now the big question is how to find the others.

"It's easy to look at a picture of the site of the crash or whatever but you can see the physical aspects of the terrain," says Staff Sgt. Bill Young.

"We're gonna focus on the front forward portion of the aircraft and then work our way back down the hill and just continue to excavate the dirt down to the coral to bed rock," explains archeologist Bill Belcher.

It's a big job but at least now they have a place to dig.

So the probable resting place of Pilot Donald Baxter and Gunner Arthur Miller was finally pinpointed by the military a week ago Thursday and Young was there. Recovery operations should begin shortly.

Lost Pilots of the Pacific: Diving for Answers.
Lou Young reports. Part 4.

Feb 13, 2004 11:55 am US/Eastern

At this moment, a special U.S. military unit is beginning a new day of work on the other side of the world. They're searching for the remains of a pilot who has been missing 60 years. He was one of the lost pilots of the Pacific. CBS 2's Lou Young was with the crew when they began the mission just last week.

The searchers had all but given up hope years ago. But the recent discovery of a submerged fighter plane set the search in motion again.

Young traveled to the Pacific island nation of Palau, which was a World War II battlefield and is now the scene of an unusual underwater recovery.

While you may have been watching the Super Bowl, searchers on the other side of the world prepared at a harbor in Palau for an underwater mission.

Crews are burrowing into the wreckage of a Corsair fighter that was blown out of the sky in 1944, with Marine Major Quentus Nelson at the controls.

The missing airman's wingmen saw him take the hit. The target was on the other side of the island, what was a Japanese ship repair facility and seaplane base.

They saw him take the hit, but they didn't see him go down and for years they searched that island looking for the wreckage.

It is believed Major Nelson made a u-turn, and may have tried for a water landing. Instead, he hit the water hard, burrowing into the silt and the coral.

Searchers had high hopes of finding the remains of the pilot in the wreckage.

The plane flipped on impact and is buried cockpit-down. The team is using a giant vacuum to suck material from under the fuselage, then loads it into mesh bags. Next, the wreckage is sifted through screens set up on the barge.

What they are looking for won't look like a person, but could answer the question of what happened, how Major Nelson died, a missing piece of history and something for the family back home to bury.

Before the first dive, the team leader read a telegram from Major Nelson's son reminding them what's at stake. They frankly expect to find remains here but two days of work yield nothing except coral and pieces of the shattered plane.

"This is the kind of stuff we're finding: pieces of the aircraft that tell us we're in the right place," says Gloria Berry, a member of the recovery team.

The search could go on for weeks. "It's a little tedious you just have to stay focused and just keep looking for bones, fragments or teeth. You just can't lose focus you have to stay serious with your work and keep looking," explains team commander Capt. Dave Young.

A check with the command's headquarters in Hawaii Thursday afternoon indicates that no human remains have been found, yet after nearly a full week of work.

But they remain optimistic. The irony of this is that in previous searches for the aircraft and pilot, teams passed right over the wreckage on their way to the island on the other side of the harbor.

Lost Pilots Of The Pacific: Identifying The Remains.
Lou Young reports. Part 5.

Feb 13, 2004 6:00 pm US/Eastern

NEW YORK (CBS) When a missing American soldier is found, we usually see a flag-draped coffin and a somber ceremony. CBS 2's Lou Young went inside the usually off-limits facility where American remains are tested and identified.

Never is the cost of war more apparent when you realize how physically complete the killing can be. Now consider 60 years have passed since the carnage and mechanized destruction engulfed some of the tiny islands far in the Pacific.

Identifying the missing and the dead has never been more difficult.

Searchers face a daunting puzzle: ancient, weather boots, shredded flight suits and rusted weapons.

Young visited the largest forensic lab in the world at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii, a U.S. Military facility near Pearl Harbor with the sole purpose of identifying American MIAs. The place is at once impressive and heartbreaking.

"You can't lose site of the fact that these are human beings somebody cared about and make sure that you treat them with that level of respect," explains Dr. Thomas Holland.

The remains are laid out on tables, examined, assembled, bagged, tagged, boxed and stored row upon row, waiting to be linked by science with one of the American missing, about a third of whom were lost in and around this part of the world in three modern conflicts, Vietnam, Korea and World War II.

The names of those missing in the Pacific can be found all in one place, on the walls of stone courtyards in Honolulu. There are ten of these courtyards in this place called the Garden of the Missing: more than 28,000 names of Americans lost and waiting to be found.

By contrast there is a much more modest memorial on the wall at Hickham Air Force Base. The memorial lists the names of MIAs recovered and identified in the past 12 years.

General W. Montague Winfield says it's a trickle against the tide. "We do this because it's the right thing to do. We identify about a hundred a year so you do the math. If there's about 90,000, we have a lot of work to do."

The MIA recovery effort has ballooned since it first focused on Vietnam in the mid 1970's. It now occupies $100 million a year of our military budget.

"I know a lot of the family members and have met them and I know how much good we do by doing this," explains archeologist Bill Belcher.

It is debt paid to the dead but also a promise to the living still serving their country in uniform. The implied promise: if you are lost, someone will come searching.

It is that profound belief that propels the military's MIA mission. Warriors know more than anyone how ugly war is.

Fulfilling the process of recovery and return of the missing, feels to many like something approaching salvation.

© MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc."