Stars and Stripes
Published: December 10, 2014
The Defense
Department’s accounting agencies have agreed to disinter and conduct DNA
testing on the remains of 10 World War II service members who were buried as
unknowns in the Philippines, after years of fighting against unearthing the
bodies. But now the relative of one veteran believed to be buried there might
block the exhumation.
Families of
the missing and Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command
whistleblowers believe modern technology and the analysis of war and post-war
documents can easily identify a great number of these World War II unknowns but
say JPAC has chosen to ignore them.
- As the Defense Department attempts to identify World War II remains exhumed in the Philippines in August, questions have surfaced about the identification years ago of four sets of remains that were returned to families and buried.
The revelations are the latest in
the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command saga to identify
14 service members and Navy employees who died at the hands of Japanese captors
on Nov. 19, 1942, at the Cabanatuan prisoner of war camp in Luzon and were
buried in communal grave 717.
After the war, remains of four of
the men in that grave were allegedly identified and sent home to their
families. What were thought to be the remains of 10 others were moved to the
Manila American Cemetery and buried as unknowns.
Following a lawsuit by one of the
families of the unknown men, their remains were exhumed and samples sent to the
Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory for DNA testing.
Documents obtained by Stars and
Stripes show that in the past five years, three accounting officials believed
that the four identifications made after the war were incorrect, which would
hamper current attempts to identify the others.
Documents released last month in
district court in Texas revealed that the remains of 11 people were found in
the 10 exhumed caskets, and that accounting personnel are unable to provide
“reportable results” on all of the samples sent to AFDIL although testing is
ongoing.
AFDIL’s mitochondrial DNA testing —
using DNA from maternal lineage — “supports the indication of a minimum of 11
individuals in the assemblage,” according to a status report obtained by Stars
and Stripes.
Of the 149 bone and teeth samples,
DNA had been extracted from them all “at least once and, when possible, two or
more times,” the report said. Yet of the 10 samples provided to the Armed
Forces DNA Identification Laboratory by the JPAC laboratory, four did not yield
solid results.
“The remaining four samples of the
original 10 have been extracted multiple times and have been determined to be
not reportable at this time,” the report said. Families of the missing believe
that the unreportable results could be attributed to incorrect IDs made after
the war.
Officials from the Defense
POW/Missing Personnel Office declined to comment due to the ongoing litigation.
The report also states that the
agencies do not have all of the family reference samples to make the
identifications, and that nuclear DNA inherited from both parents, which has
been heralded as a superior testing method by experts, has not been used.
The disclosures of extra body parts
and shaky identifications leave the Defense Department’s accounting agencies in
a quandary. Will they repatriate the extra portion of remains with its already
“identified” buried owner or dispose of it?
After the war, it had been standard
practice to bury portions of remains in caskets marked as unknowns, even in
cases where evidence pointed to an already identified and buried owner. In
recent years, extra portions were cremated and disposed of in a landfill.
However, that practice was stopped after public backlash; portions of remains
are now cremated and buried at sea.
It is unknown whether there are
plans to exhume the four sets of already identified remains, but the move has
been recommended by accounting personnel.
“The previous 4 identifications may
have been premature,” anthropologist Debra Prince Zinni wrote to Tom Holland,
Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command scientific director and deputy to the
commander for Central Identification Laboratory operations, in an Oct. 19, 2011
memo. Family reference samples for the four identified cases “must also be collected
prior to disinterment.”
The Zinni memo followed a similar
one a year earlier by Heather Harris that cast a shadow on the identifications.
- The remains turned over to the family of Pfc. Daniel Bain were done so primarily because of an ID tag, which is often unreliable.
- Pfc. Juan Gutierrez was identified by two officers from the Dental Corps even though “no dental forms were available for comparison,” Harris wrote citing his 1946 “Report of Interment.”
- Sgt. Lawrence Hanscom was identified based on the comparison of multiple dental extractions and restorations. However, the memo states that matching up the charts was a challenge because problematic teeth were often pulled during imprisonment and malnutrition the men experienced caused tooth loss. No height, age or race could be determined for comparison.
- The remains identified as Pfc. Harvey Nichols showed a restoration in the teeth where none was listed in his records. “More troubling is the lack of restorations on teeth shown to have restorations present in PFC Nichols’ records,” Harris wrote. The remains were also estimated to be four or five inches shorter than Nichols, Harris wrote.
“The possibility that the resolved
casualties were misidentified cannot be excluded,” said former JPAC
investigator Rick Stone, quoting a report he drafted on the four sets of
remains on behalf of JPAC’s deputy to the commander for external relations and
legislative affairs Johnnie Webb.
Stone declined to provide copies to
Stars and Stripes because they were labeled “for official use only.”
John Eakin, cousin of one of the
unknowns, filed suit against the government demanding a timely identification
on behalf of the Kelder family. Pvt. Arthur “Bud” Kelder is one of 73,652 service
members unaccounted for from the war. His family believes Kelder was one of the
more than 8,500 American service members from World War II buried as an unknown
in American cemeteries around the world. He, other families and JPAC
whistleblowers believe that more can be done to identify remains, but claim the
defense accounting agencies have refused.
Eakin said he understood why JPAC
was reluctant to exhume the remains and attempt to make the IDs.
Identifications from previous conflicts, before DNA testing, could become
suspect.
“It confirms the research memos and
investigative reports” that the IDs made after the war were incorrect, he said.
Eakin fears the accounting agencies
will refrain from disturbing the four families of the previously identified
remains and will instead dispose of the 11th set of remains and place the four
unreportable cases back into unknown graves.
“They’ll send them back to Manila
and bury them again,” Eakin said. “I hate to think the worst of anyone but
these people have demonstrated no regard for the truth.”
Despite the questionable
identifications, Zinni believes the remains could be identified using modern
technology.
“Although the remains are described
as eroded and lacking identifiable characteristics, advances in technology ...
may help in identification of remains from Common Grave 717,” she wrote.
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