Re: Lost Pilots of the Pacific

Date: February 10, 2004

"Lost Pilots Of The Pacific

* A CBS 2 Special Report


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.

MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc., CBS 2 New York"