Another family joins lawsuit against JPAC for recovery of remains from WWII

Another family has filed suit against the Defense Department POW/MIA accounting agencies seeking the identification and return of remains.

Sally Hill Jones — niece and next of kin of a missing World War II Army Air Forces B-24 gunner — filed suit without the assistance of an attorney on Dec. 4 in a Texas district court, according to documents. Jones seeks to join John Eakin in suing the government over remains she believes could belong to her uncle, Staff Sgt. Carl Holley.br>
Holley was one of 10 reportedly killed on April 18, 1944, when the B-24 bomber “Sweepy-Time” Gal was shot down by Japanese Zeroes off the coast of Hong Kong. Four bodies were recovered after the crash, and three allegedly have been identified, according to Jones, former Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command investigators and accounting documents. br>
The unidentified remains were buried at Hawaii’s National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, called the Punchbowl, until 2005, when they were exhumed by JPAC.br>
The Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory and JPAC’s Central Identification Laboratory have tried to use DNA testing to identify the remains but have been unable to do so, according to internal emails and documents. br>
In 2012, after years of JPAC denials, Eakin sued for the remains of his cousin, Pvt. Arthur “Bud” Kelder, who, evidence suggested, was buried as an unknown in the Philippines. As a result, the Defense Department exhumed 10 sets of remains in August and is actively working to make identifications. br>
Jones said she had been pursuing the case since 2001, but couldn’t get answers until she filed her lawsuit. The accounting community finally responded to her, but she was not satisfied. br>
The government has until Jan. 16 to respond to her suit, according to U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesman Daryl Fields. br>
“I don’t have faith in JPAC to make the ID, given their track record,” Jones said. br>
She hoped that by suing, she could open the door for other families.br>
“I’d like to see an attorney take this on as a class action,” she said. “There are a lot of older folks whose siblings died in World War II, and they don’t know what happened to them. But they could know. It’s heartbreaking.”br>
Lt. Col. Melinda Morgan, of the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office, declined to comment in an email to Stars and Stripes, citing the ongoing litigation.br>
However, Jones provided documents and emails to Stars and Stripes that show the JPAC-CIL and AFDIL are using an untested, next-generation mitochondrial DNA approach with the remains. They believe they have a result, but the procedure hasn’t been validated yet. br>
Jones has been told the validation and an identification could come early next year.br>
Mark Leney, JPAC’s former DNA manager, who is now at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, had undertaken the case before he left JPAC in 2006. He said the remains appeared to have been treated with a chemical — possibly formaldehyde — that made the identification difficult at the time. However, he believed that issue had been resolved in recent years by technological advancements.br>
“That was eight years ago,” he said. “It doesn’t seem like they’ve gone very far.”br>
Leney said mitochondrial DNA testing is “not a very strong method” in making identifications and works best in exclusions. br>
Jones started her quest for an ID more than a decade ago. Her mother has since died.br>
Louis Mroz, younger brother of 2nd Lt. John Mroz, who also died in the plane crash and is one of the seven missing, had been leading efforts to compel the government to make an identification but is now 86 and in poor health. He said he has been turned away by JPAC several times when seeking answers. br>
“I’d like to see some new sources of information,” he said. br>
Jones hopes her suit can spur identifications before the memories fade — like Mroz’s recollection of his brother building him a P-40 Warhawk model airplane just before he shipped out.br>
“He was quite a guy,” Mroz said of his brother. “He always had time to help me. … I’m 86 years old, but the memories are still fresh in my mind.” br>
Tuesday 23 December 2014 br>
http://www.stripes.com/news/another-family-joins-lawsuit-against-jpac-for-recovery-of-remains-from-wwii-1.320590

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70 years later, U.S. soldier killed in Normandy returns home

U.S. Army Private First Class Lawrence S. Gordon — killed in Normandy in 1944, then mistakenly buried as a German soldier — will soon be going home to his family.

But don’t thank the American military for this belated return. The Pentagon declined to act on his case, despite exhaustive research by civilian investigators that pointed to the location of his remains.

Instead, Gordon’s family and advocates used the same evidence to persuade French and German officials to exhume Gordon and identify him through DNA testing. That’s right: the relatives of this U.S. soldier, who fought against the Germans, are relying on Germany to bring him back home.

Gordon’s case is another example of breakdowns in the American system for finding and identifying tens of thousands of missing service members from past conflicts. More than 9,400 troops are buried as “unknowns” in American cemeteries around the world. Yet, as ProPublica and NPR recently reported, the Joint Prisoners of War/Missing in Action Accounting Command (J-PAC) rarely disinters any of those men to try to use DNA to identify them. On average, just 4 percent of such cases move forward.

A Pentagon review ordered by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel of how the military is managing its mission to find and identify MIAs concludes next month.

Gordon’s family benefited from a fluke of circumstance: Gordon was in a German cemetery in France, not an American one, allowing his case to advance without the U.S. military’s participation.

Jed Henry, a filmmaker from Wisconsin whose grandfather served in Gordon’s unit, took up Gordon’s case in 2011. Henry scoured records, witness statements and various archives and pieced together evidence about Gordon’s whereabouts.

Gordon’s family knew only that he was killed in Normandy when a German shell hit his armored car in August 1944. Gordon’s bloody wallet was sent home to his mother in Canada. (Gordon had Canadian citizenship, but he was born to American parents and decided to enlist in the U.S. Army.)

Henry found paperwork revealing the Army had recovered the destroyed vehicle and two badly burned, unidentifiable bodies. They were buried as American unknowns.

After the war ended, the Army dug up both sets of remains, finding they wore German clothing. Using fingerprints, one was identified as U.S. Army Pvt. James Bowman, who had been in the turret of the car next to Gordon.

It was impossible to use fingerprints to identify the other set of remains. The bones were given a number, X-356, for lack of a name. Because of the German clothing, they were turned over to the Germans, who interred them in a crypt in France.

That evidence was enough to persuade the French and German governments to exhume the remains last fall and test for DNA, but not the Pentagon.

“Why is that we had enough evidence to convince the French and the Germans but not the Americans?” Henry asked. “Why is the burden of proof in America so much higher? It’s ludicrous.”

The April 2013 internal J-PAC memo argued that the evidence was too thin to eliminate the thousands of other men who died in the area during that time, concluding “that the association between [Gordon] and this set of remains was possible but improbable.” J-PAC historian Jeffery Johnson questioned whether it was even within the agency’s authority or responsibility to try to identify Gordon because he was a Canadian citizen.

Another J-PAC official told Henry in an email that the case didn’t meet the criteria for disinterment set by Pentagon policy. In practice, J-PAC’s scientific director, Tom Holland, has broad leeway to interpret that criteria and he has set an extraordinarily high standard that has led to the 96 percent rejection rate. J-PAC did only one World War II disinterment in 2013 and none in 2012.

So the critical tests on the remains were performed by France’s National Forensic Science Institute, which found that DNA from a molar matched that of Gordon’s nephews, according to a letter from the French prosecutor overseeing the matter.

Dirk H. Backen, the Brigadier General of the German Defense Attaché, sent a personal letter to Gordon’s namesake and nephew, Lawrence R. Gordon, after learning of the test results, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

“Eventually, justice has won. My congratulations for showing such honorable commitment, patriotism, faith and courage to walk that long path for your uncle,” Backen wrote. “He will come home and that is what counts. He fell in a battle against my countrymen, but he did this under a just cause: To liberate Europe from fascism and to restore peace, freedom and humanity. His sacrifice was not in vain.” There will be a ceremony on June 10 in France to turn Gordon’s remains over to his family. For the flight across the Atlantic, representatives of the Canadian, German and French military will escort Gordon, Henry said. It’s unclear if the American military will be there, he added.

The remains will go next to the University of Wisconsin for an anthropologist and odontologist to inspect. The lab there will also test the DNA to confirm the French results. The family has invited J-PAC to observe the process but has opted not to give the remains to the agency to examine independently.

The family won’t wait on the U.S. government to proceed with burying Gordon in Saskatchewan on Aug. 13, the 70th anniversary of his death, Henry said.

The Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office said in a statement that “we strongly believe that Pfc. Gordon will receive full military benefits and honors suitable to the honorable service and sacrifice that he made for all of our Countries during the Second World War.”

Gordon’s family and advocates are frustrated the U.S. military is just now stepping up to be involved.

J-PAC’s “mission statement says to achieve the fullest possible accounting of soldiers,” Henry said. “They’re never going to get everybody, but they can certainly do a hell of a lot better than what they’re doing.”

Sunday 23 March 2014

http://www.salon.com/2014/03/22/70_years_later_u_s_soldier_killed_in_normandy_is_finally_coming_home_partner/

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U.S troops killed in action have a last ally

Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii (CNN) -- There is a skull here, hundreds of fragments of bones there. Table after table is lined with human remains. One holds a near-complete skeleton, another has hundreds of tiny pieces of bone that could come from many different people. Together, it tells the story of life and death in the military.

At the world's largest skeletal identification laboratory more than 30 forensic anthropologists, archaeologists and dentists of Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command are working to put names to the remains.

Based at Hickam Air Force Base -- site of the Pearl Harbor attack -- in Honolulu, Hawaii, JPAC is made up of all branches of the U.S. military and civilian scientists, united in the goal of bringing back all 84,000 U.S. service members who went missing during war or military action.
The unit researches old war records and combs battle sites and aircraft crash sites in some of the most remote locations around the world.

Any recovered remains are brought back to JPAC's Central Identification Laboratory.
The mission is to bring answers to families who may have been waiting 60 years or more to hear anything about a loved one. They call it the most honorable mission in the military.

"I've been all over the world from Korea to South Africa, East Asia to South America and then, of course, in Iraq and my job is to defeat the enemy. I am proud of that," says Lt. Col. Raul Gonzalez, who works at JPAC managing 18 teams who search for remains.

"This job, though, has been one of the more healing jobs in a sense that instead of doing what I am normally planning on doing and training to do, I'm bringing people back together, bringing families back together, bringing closure and it is truly, deep down inside, one of the most rewarding experiences."

Dr. Robert Mann, a forensic anthropologist at CIL and head of the forensic science academy there. "The task is daunting. It's incredibly complicated. It goes to the peaks of the Himalayas, it goes to the jungles of Southeast Asia. It goes to the oceans of the Pacific. So from the highest point to the lowest point on the earth, we're looking for missing Americans."
The mission can start in many different ways, possibly a tip from a veteran who remembers where he lost a fellow soldier during a hectic battle, or even from someone finding remains while digging in their yard.

Most of the time, investigations begin with a researcher or historian who searches military records known as Individual Deceased Personnel Files.

The files include information about where a service member was lost and how that person may have died. It's the researcher's role to figure out if there is enough evidence to search a site.
"We'll look at all the evidence and say is it going to be worth it to actually go to the site?" explains historian Andrew Speelhoffer. "And if it is, the next time we're in that country, we'll put that on the list. And we'll go to the site and we'll locate and question any witnesses."
"I think one of the most interesting parts of my job is just learning these cases individually," Speelhoffer says. "I think one of the things about World War II is just the size of it, just the numbers you're talking about. We're missing upwards of 74,000 Americans.

"When you're dealing with those kinds of numbers, it's really interesting to look at these cases on an individual basis and learn little bits, little tidbits of information about these guys. You know, where they were from, what particular mission they were on, that kind of thing."
"I think one of the things about World War II is just the size of it, just the numbers you're talking about. We're missing upwards of 74,000 Americans."

Once a site is approved, an investigation team interviews possible witnesses and does a preliminary search of the grounds. If they find enough evidence that remains are present a recovery team is sent back to the site to dig for remains.

Recovery sites can be grueling. Wars are often fought far away from the comforts of home, and the recovery teams sometimes camp at a dig site for up to 60 days. The end result -- finding a service member who'd been lost for decades -- makes it all worthwhile.

"I got here in 1992 and about the first five years I was in the jungles," Mann says, who with other anthropologists and archaeologists goes on recovery missions as well as working in the lab.

"I went native. I got out there and I didn't want to come back because it was so exciting. It was such an invigorating thing and I felt as though I was doing something really good to bring home these missing Americans.

"Once you do this, you get the bug, you realize what your contribution can be to science, what your contribution can be to the United States. And to these guys and gals who served and gave everything.

"I feel as though this is something that I can give back to those folks who served and to those families who are out there still that are looking for answers. I think it is the most exciting thing anybody could ever do."

Mann has been on digs with veterans who return to the site of terrifying battles to help them figure out where to find lost soldiers.

And when remains are brought back to CIL, Mann is one of the anthropologists trying to put a name to the remains -- a very long and intense process.

The work begins by identifying sex, age at death, racial or ancestral background, how tall the individual was, and what kind of trauma the person received.
Mann explains the process, starting with first knowing where the remains were recovered. "So you've narrowed it down geographically. Then you end up with say 20 individuals that are missing within a 20-mile radius of where these remains were recovered.
"And we're going to keep searching, we're going to keep trying, and we're not going to give up on these guys and gals who are missing."

"You've now got it down to 20 individuals. And now the biology, the anthropology is going to say "well this is a 20-24 year old white male." You've narrowed it down again. How tall is he? He's about 5'8 to 5'9. And you can see you keep narrowing and narrowing and narrowing it to where you get it down to where the dental says, it is this individual right here."

Dental records, when they're available, are often the key to making a final identification.
Lt. Col. Lisa Franklin is a forensic odontologist -- a dentist who compares dental remains to dental records to make an identification.

"If a body is found and there are different types of dental restorations in the mouth -- say a metal crown, maybe a white filling, a composite filling or a resin filling -- those are very unique things in individual mouths and it sets them apart from somebody else who does not have those things in their teeth. So the dental profile can be very unique to one individual."

But not all remains include the jaw or teeth, which is why the scientists at CIL are constantly looking for new technology. Another identification technique is comparing mitochondrial DNA found in bones -- not the same type that can be extracted through saliva or blood -- to DNA extracted from a maternal lineage.

The scientists are also testing out a new way to use the old method of photo superimposition. Using two cameras -- one on a photograph, the other on a skull -- they are trying to determine the accuracy of layering a photo over a skull to make identifications.
It is a mission this unit says it will never tire of.

"Technology changes, technology evolves and gets better," says Mann. "So what we can't do today with this one little piece of bone, we might be able to do tomorrow with DNA.
"And we're going to keep searching, we're going to keep trying, and we're not going to give up on these guys and gals who are missing."

By Misty Showalter, CNN, January 26, 2012
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/26/us/wus-us-identify-mia/index.html

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