A set of remains of US missing soldiers, recovered from a World War II crash site along the India-China border in Arunachal Pradesh was on Wednesday sent from here to a Hawaii lab for DNA testing.
This marked first possibilities of closure for the families of an estimated over 400 US aircrew members who were declared missing during the war in the treacherous Himalayas after their aircrafts carrying supplies to China in the war against Japan crashed.
At a ceremony at Palam airport, attended by visiting US defence secretary Ashton Carter, fragments of bone recovered by the Prisoner of War / Missing In Action or POW/MIA
Accounting Agency (DPAA) — a specialised US team — were flown by US military aircraft to the DPAA laboratory in Honolulu, Hawaii, for further identification.
One set of remains was recovered in the Arunachal Pradesh state between September 12 and November 17, 2015. A second set of remains was unilaterally turned over to DPAA by a third party from the same region.
Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Crook said that the remains recovered late last year are possibly associated with the bomber B-24 crash on January 25, 1944, where a crew of eight personnel assigned to the 14th Air Force were lost during a routine mission from Kunming, China to Chabua, India.
The remains that were turned over to DPAA are possibly related to a C-109 that crashed on July 17, 1945, travelling from Jorhat, India, to Hsinching, China, with a four-man Army Air Force crew.
The Modi government in September last allowed DPAA to venture into the treacherous route along Himalayas, also known as The Hump due to its great height, despite reservations from China. Earlier, in 2009, the DPAA had to stop its recovery mission after China raised objections on US teams entering into Arunachal Pradesh, that China claims to be its own territory.
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