The US military on Thursday repatriated what might be the remains of service personnel who were lost in action in Myanmar during World War II.
The remains from Myanmar’s central Sagaing Region were repatriated at a ceremony at Mandalay International Airport after being recovered in a mission carried out by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency of the US Department of Defense, the US embassy said.
“Over 75 years ago, brave Americans gave their lives on a river bank in Sagaing, fighting for peace, justice and freedom far from home,” embassy Deputy Chief of Mission George Sibley said at the ceremony.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“Today we recommit to those noble values as we repatriate the possible remains of those US citizens, and honor their service and their sacrifices,” he said.
The remains are to be flown to the agency’s laboratory in Hawaii for analysis and potential identification.
There are 505 US service members still unaccounted for in Myanmar, which was known as Burma during World War II.
The remains of 23 have been identified after three recovery missions carried out in 2003 and 2004, and another nine since 2013.
The remains repatriated on Thursday are thought to be related to a B-25G bomber with a crew of seven that was lost in February 1944.
Myanmar was then a British colony occupied by Imperial Japan’s armed forces.
The airplane’s wreckage was located in 1946 and some possible remains were recovered last year in the same region, but have not yet resulted in an identification.
More than 72,000 US soldiers remain unaccounted for from World War II, more than 7,800 from the Korean War and 1,585 from the conflict in Vietnam, agency data showed.
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