U-TAPAO, Thailand — The remains of an American airman who went missing in action in World War II may finally be on their way home, thanks to a chance discovery of records in flood-threatened archives in Thailand.
U.S. and local authorities held a solemn ceremony Wednesday at an air base in eastern Thailand to honor and repatriate remains recently recovered from a rice field in the north of the country.
At the U-Tapao naval air base on Thailand's eastern seaboard, military personnel along with Thai and American officials paid their respects. A casket containing the discovered remains was draped in the U.S. flag before being taken to the United States aboard a C-17 transport plane.
Tests at a special laboratory in Hawaii will determine if the remains are human and possibly identify the person. But circumstantial evidence has raised expectation the casket holds a long-lost service member from the U.S. Army Air Forces.
“You know, it's keeping the promise that we never leave a person behind. Anybody's who's served in combat in any way, who's fought alongside somebody, regardless of country or nation, there's a bond that's built. We owe it to the families to find those answers, to bring those people home,” said Marine Col. Matt Brannen, who heads up the Indo-Pacific directorate of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, or DPAA, the U.S. body tasked with finding the war missing.
Thailand was officially allied to…
