Families of missing US soldiers in Arunachal during WW II still in agony

Joseph P Kurta's aircraft, "Haley’s Comet," had gone missing on January 25, 1944, over the skies in Arunachal Pradesh while on a flight from China to India during World War II.

Kurta, a radio operator in the US Army Air Force has remained traceless since then. Sixty-six years later in 2010, Clayton Kuhles, an independent researcher in the US helped his family members to identify the crash site of Kurta's plane in Arunachal Pradesh.

"My mother, Dorothy often spoke of how not being able to bury the remains of her brother was heartbreaking to her and the entire family. My mother passed away in 2016," Kurta's nephew Joseph J Brizzi, a pharmacist in Newberry in the US now, told DH in an email.

"We are still waiting for the return of his mortal remains back home," Brizzi said.

Excavation and recovery of human remains of a few US soldiers from the crash sites in Arunachal Pradesh in 2015 and 2016 came as a ray of hope for family members of over 400 US soldiers, whose aircrafts had similarly crashed during the WW II.

China, Burma (present Myanmar), and Northeast India were a theatre of WW II (1939-1945) in which Allied Forces including the US soldiers had fought against the Japanese soldiers and their allies. Most of the aircraft of the US army air corps were lost while flying from Kunming in China to Upper Assam's Chabua, a distance of 1,400km.

But a halt in the recovery mission in Arunachal Pradesh since 2016 has made the wait of such families in the US agonising.

"It seems neither the government of India nor the Government of the United States puts a high priority on the recovery of human artefacts," Li Lammart, grand-niece of Charles Howard Mortimer, the 1st Lt in the US Army/Air Force, told DH.

Lammart, now 66, who retired from the US department of defence, lives in Washington.

Heidi Briley, niece of Irwin Zaetz, a 1st Lt in the US Army/Air Force, and Victoria Nissen, the niece of Louis Verhaegen, who also disappeared in the same region also shared almost similar stories of agony and unending wait to perform last rights of their dear ones.

Gary Zaetz, president of Families and Supporters of America's Arunachal Missing in Action, a forum of nearly 200 family members told DH that their repeated pleas to officials in both the US and India for resumption of the mission for recovery of the mortal remains yielded no action on the ground yet.

"It's very frustrating for the families of these men that so much progress is being made in other aspects of the US-India relationship, such as trade, weapons purchases, climate cooperation but so little is made in the area of MIAs," Gary said.

Reacting to a report in DH about the visit of a Japanese government team to Nagaland recently to take back the possible remains of their soldiers who had also died during the WW II, Zaetz asked, "If India can allow Japan to carry out the mission in Nagaland, why not allowing the US in Arunachal Pradesh?" He suspected that India was not allowing the mission in Arunachal Pradesh as China claims the state as its own.

Responding to an email query from DH on April 7 about the delay in the resumption of the recovery mission in Arunachal Pradesh, Ariel Pollock, spokesperson of the US Embassy in New Delhi on April 20 said they were still awaiting a response from the US Department of Defence.

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