{"id":32220,"date":"2012-10-02T15:09:24","date_gmt":"2012-10-02T19:09:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=32220"},"modified":"2015-02-06T13:44:54","modified_gmt":"2015-02-06T18:44:54","slug":"more-return-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=32220","title":{"rendered":"More Return Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

I previously wrote about the return and burial of Pfc John A. Donovan, USMC<\/a>.\u00a0 He and six fellow Marines were lost when their aircraft crashed on the island of Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu, on 23 April 1944.<\/p>\n

The Department of Defense today announced that the identification and return of remains for the crew<\/a> is now complete.\u00a0 A group burial will be held at Arlington National Ceremony on Thursday, 4 October 2012.<\/p>\n

The individuals in that ill-fated flight crew were Marine Corps 1st Lt. Laverne A. Lallathin of Raymond, Wash.; 2nd Lt. Dwight D. Ekstam of Moline, IL; 2nd Lt. Walter B. Vincent, Jr. of Tulsa, OK; Tech. Sgt. James A. Sisney of Redwood City, CA; Cpl. Wayne R. Erickson of Minneapolis, MN; Cpl. John D. Yeager of Pittsburgh, PA; and Pfc. John A. Donovan of Plymouth, MI.\u00a0 All but 1st Lt Lallathin have been previously identified and interred in individual ceremonies.\u00a0 1st Lt Lallathin’s remains will be also interred individually in a separate ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on 4 October 2012.<\/p>\n

In separate announcements last week, the Department of Defense announced that the remains of Army Air Forces 2LT Samuel E. Lunday<\/a>, of Marianna, FL, and USMC Pfc. Richard S. Gzik<\/a>, of Toledo, OH, have been identified.\u00a0 Their remains will also be returned to their families for burial with military honors.<\/p>\n

2LT Lunday and four others were lost on 24 April 1943 when their C-87 aircraft did not return to its home base in Chabua, India, from an \u201cOver the Hump\u201d resupply mission to China.\u00a0 In 2003 the aircraft’s crash site was located near the Burmese border approximately 100 miles away from Chabua.\u00a0 Several artifacts from the aircraft, along with some human remains, were recovered and turned over to US authorities at that time.\u00a0 The remains returned were identified as Lunday\u2019s through mitochondrial DNA testing from maternal-line relatives.\u00a0 Negotiations are underway with the government of India to allow excavation of the crash site.<\/p>\n

Pfc. Gzik was KIA west of the Chosin Reservoir, North Korea, on 2 December 1950.\u00a0 His remains were buried alongside the road leading to Hagaru-ri.\u00a0 However, the US retreat from the Chosin Reservoir later that month made recovery of his remains impossible at the time.\u00a0 Gzik\u2019s remains were returned to US control in 1954 during an exchange of war dead with North Korea, but could not be definitively identified using then-current technology.\u00a0 They were reburied as Unknown at National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii (the \u201cPunchbowl\u201d).\u00a0 Subsequent advances in technology led to subsequent reexamination and identification of Pfc. Gzik\u2019s remains earlier this year.<\/p>\n

A belated welcome home, my elder brothers-in-arms.\u00a0 Rest now in peace – at home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I previously wrote about the return and burial of Pfc John A. Donovan, USMC.\u00a0 He and … More Return Home<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[210],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-no-longer-missing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32220\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}