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After 6 decades, searches go on for missing

The military takes its “leave no man behind” ethos so seriously that even 60 years after the fact, U.S. service members still make expeditions to overgrown battlefields, remote islands — and in the case of a recent mission, the bottom of the Pacific Ocean — to look for the remains of yesteryear’s warriors.

Earlier this year, sailors of the Navy’s Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit 1, based in Hawaii, accompanied other service members and civilian searchers to the tiny Pacific island of Palau to look for the crash site of a B-24 Liberator shot down Sept. 1, 1944. The bomber was hit by anti-aircraft fire during a battle with the Japanese; three of its crew bailed out, but eight were trapped in the plane, which sank in about 60 feet of water near the village of Koror.

Bent Prop, a civilian group that searches for World War II crash sites, located the sunken B-24 in 2004 and reported the find to Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command. After military investigators confirmed the possibility that the site could include human remains, JPAC called in Navy divers.

“Their familiarity and their skill level in military underwater activities gives them an expertise that we count on in these recoveries,” JPAC spokesman Army Maj. Brian DiSantos said. MDSU 1 divers have taken part in similar underwater recovery missions before.

Excavating a site on the seabed is not very different from a project on land, DiSantos said — first, the divers set up a grid, note the positions of objects of interest inside it, and then, gingerly, begin inspecting each one.

“If you think of it from an archeological standpoint, this is just like excavating something in the deserts of Egypt, except it’s underwater,” DiSantos said.

On the recent mission to Palau, the sailors found human remains, personal effects and other evidence, all of which are being analyzed in Hawaii. Investigators won’t be sure how many bodies were recovered from the wreck until they’ve been examined.

The divers who participate in JPAC have no additional training to help with recovery missions, DiSantos said. The team archeologist briefs them on site about what to look for and how to handle the equipment and remains that have lain underwater for so long.

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