US Army, locals search for WWII remains

THE United States Army with the help of local villagers from Kovu in Gulf are searching the area known to be a plane-crash site to recover the evidence of two airmen lost there during World War II.
Airmen William Henry Melville and George Edward Fenn were part of the 36th Fighter Squadron-4 aircraft. They were among more than a thousand US soldiers fighting during World War II and thought to have crashed at Kovu.
Dr Traci Van Deest, a recovery scientist, said there were two teams in PNG conducting a special operation. “We are the recovery team and our task is to do the excavation and our next team is the investigation team who are in other provinces doing investigation,” Van Deest said.
“The US agency, Department of Defence Prisoner of War or Missing in Action (POW/MIA) accounting agency have listed more than 80,000 individuals missing all over the world.”
Van Deest said one crash site was still unknown and they were working on it. The evidences collected like pieces of plane, bones, life support equipment or other items like watch, eyeglass found will be taken to laboratories in US to identify the missing pilots.
“We have the historical evidence, the archaeology and the field work that we are doing. All this, if come together for one person and match with the information that we have, then that we will identify them,” Deest said.
“We started our search two weeks ago and three more weeks are remaining for us to complete the search at this site.”
Local spokesperson and the landowner Chris Sivio said war history was passed down from their grandfather who had been helping soldiers during the war.