Crash site links man to his father, missing in WWII
By Jessie-Lynne Kerr
The Florida Times-Union
Ken Belisle never knew the father who was reported missing in action 64 years ago.
But today the Jacksonville resident has his father's wedding ring, dog tags and identification bracelet found when the remains of 11 U.S. servicemen - including his father, 2nd Lt. Kenneth L. Cassidy of Worcester, Mass. - were recently recovered.
The Department of Defense announced the recovery and identification Friday. The remains are being returned to the U.S. for burial with military honors. A group casket will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia and marked by a headstone with all 11 names.
Belisle was born about six months after his father was reported missing in action during World War II in the Southwest Pacific. He had been told by his mother that the Army Air Corps believed the B-24D Liberator on which his father was the co-pilot had crashed at sea.
There was little hope any remains of the crew would be recovered from the depths of the ocean.
The plane had taken off from Dobodura, New Guinea, on Dec. 3, 1943, in an armed-reconnaissance mission over New Hanover Island in the Bismarck Sea.
The crew reported dropping its bombs on the target, but the plane failed to return. The aircraft could not be located on subsequent searches.
In 2000, three Papua New Guineans were hunting in a forest when they came upon aircraft wreckage near Iwaia village. The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command began an investigation and a team traveled to the village in 2002 to interview witnesses. However, they could not relocate the site.
Another team located the site 4 miles from the village in 2004. They found an aircraft data plate that correlated with the 1943 crash.
Over the next three years, command teams conducted excavations of the site and recovered human remains and some crew-related objects such as ID tags and jewelry. Investigators then used DNA, forensic tools and dental records to identify the remains.
Belisle said he was first notified by the POW/Missing Personnel Office in 2004 when the search team found the site.
"They included a photograph where you could clearly see the tail of the plane," he said.
The crew apparently got lost after the bombing run and crashed into the side of a mountain 80 miles north of the airfield, Belisle said. Heavy jungle growth protected the wreckage from the elements.
After his father was declared dead, his mother remarried an Army officer, Maurice Belisle, whom Belisle considers his father.
"He is an amazing man at age 95 and lives in Fort Myers," Belisle said. His mother died in 1995. The elder Belisle was a career Army officer who was awarded two Silver Stars.
"I changed my name to his, but he decided he shouldn't adopt me so my mother wouldn't lose the Army benefits she received on my behalf," Belisle said.
The Army called Belisle again last spring because they intended to do DNA tests on the remains. He directed them to his uncle, Robert Cassidy.
In November, an Army casualty assistance officer spent five hours with Belisle giving him information, evidence and photographs so he could sign an agreement acknowledging they were his father's remains.
"This was all a surprise to me because I never even knew him," Belisle said. "I've got two brothers and a sister from my stepfather and mother and we have a wonderful family relationship."
He also was surprised because he thought his father had crashed at sea. "I never expected to hear anything," he said.
Belisle, a 1967 graduate of the Naval Academy, applied to Annapolis as the son of a deceased veteran. After flight school, he served with VP 16 at Jacksonville Naval Air Station. He was a commercial pilot for Eastern and Northwest airlines and continued in the Navy Reserves, serving for eight months as commander of Navy Region Southeast, the first reserve rear admiral to have the command. He retired in 2004.
"When I look back, I think I had the extraordinary opportunity given to me by two different men in my life. My father's death in World War II gave me the opportunity to go to the Naval Academy and my stepfather became my role model and provided me with everything I needed," he said.
"I was doubly blessed with two men who did things in different ways that really guided the course of my life."
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