transcript

Bryan Bender's story in the Boston Globe

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LISA MULLINS: I'm Lisa Mullins, and this is The World. A story in our Boston Globe caught our attention on this Memorial Day. The article reveals that rescue teams trying to recover the remains of American pilots who died in the Second World War have got some competition. It seems that others are getting to the crash sites first, and they're interested not so much in the soldiers' remains, but in the planes. The Boston Globe's Bryan Bender, who wrote the story with Kevin Baron, is in Washington. Bryan, take us to the place where the bodies of so many American soldiers still lie, along with the ruins of their planes?

BRYAN BENDER: Papua New Guinea, which is an island just north of Australia, is probably the place in the world that has the most missing American pilots. The Pentagon estimates that 2200 were lost over a three-year period – 1942 to 1945 – when allied forces were pummeling what was a primary Japanese base in the Southwest Pacific. The terrain there is unlike any other in the world. It is some of the thickest rainforest, and deep in those rainforests lay the remains of thousands of Americans.

MULLINS: And the military is still intent on recovering those remains?

BENDER: The military goes back to New Guinea almost every year for a couple of months at a time and investigates and in some cases excavates some of these crash sites. And in recent years, of all of the World War II MIA's that have been identified – almost 500 – about half of them have been identified in Papua New Guinea.

MULLINS: All right. And some of these remains are laying adjacent to the wrecks of the planes that in some cases still hold their form. I mean, some of them are almost entirely intact. That has provided its own attraction for other people. Who are they?

BENDER: The Pentagon is in a race against these aircraft collectors who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes millions of dollars, to purchase a authentic Warbird, as they're called -- a restored, repaired WWII fighter or bomber -- and New Guinea is one of the only places left on Earth where you can find not just planes that are left intact, but some of the crucial parts that are needed now to restore some of these planes. You know, these parts – the blueprints for these planes in many cases are not available anymore, and if you really want an authentic Warbird, you have to hire some of these wreck hunters to go to these far-flung battlefields.

MULLINS: What is it worth? I mean, give us one example. I know there's something you refer to as the “Cadillac of the sky”. Tell us about that, Bryan?

BENDER: Yes. Recently, a P-51 Mustang, which was one of the iconic fighters of WWII, was sold, I think, for $2.7 million dollars.

MULLINS: Is what they're doing legal?

BENDER: Well, certainly New Guinea government has laws that bars removing any of these war relics without a permit, without their permission. And they claim that they've worked with the American government to ensure that MIA sites are not disturbed, but in reality, the Papua New Guinea government does not have a lot of power to exert. It's a very poor country, and there's bribery, there's corruption, and it's very easy for some of these wreck hunters to get in there and be able to ship some of these parts, some of these planes out of the country. The United States is not interested really in the planes, so there really isn't a law that says, “This is US property. You can't disturb it.” But they do consider these MIA sites just as they consider, you know, a downed aircraft in Iraq or Afghanistan – in fact, the Pentagon officials we talked to kept repeating that – that the wreck hunters need to know that even though it's been 65 years and we don't have all the resources we would like to get to these places, we consider these sites as if it was a military crash that happened last week; and that eventually, if we get information on these sites, we are going to get there. It may take some time but we're going to get there and see if we can recover remains.

MULLINS: There's one case that you write about, and this is the case of an entire crew that was still found with the plane.

BENDER: A number of years ago, one of the pre-eminent wreck hunters, a New Zealander who has built a reputation as someone who can find a lot of these wrecks deep in the interior of New Guinea -- told us that he had found a B-22 Bomber with the remains of the crew inside. They were very visible. And in that case, he took what he wanted from the plane itself, and then apparently alerted the New Guinea authorities that he had found this site and word never got to the Pentagon. In the intervening period the New Guinea government -- because there were some bombs still in the wreckage, saw that it was a public hazard, actually had it detonated and exploded. So whatever remains were in there were lost.

MULLINS: Which means for the military and for the families back home, what – the search ends?

BENDER: For the families back home who are still hoping that the Pentagon can solve some of these mysteries of what happened to their loved one, to their Uncle, their grandfather -- this amounts to basically disturbing a grave site. They see it as foreclosing what may be the last possible chance that they can find answers to what happened to their loved one.

MULLINS: Just one final question. When you were there, Bryan, in New Guinea, tell me if you saw the remains of say, the Thunderbolt, or is it the Air Cobra or if you saw any kind of human remains? Are they that visible?

BENDER: If you go to Papua New Guinea today, everywhere you go you'd think that the war was still going on, because the place is littered with the remnants of that campaign. The Pentagon officials who go there, they always joke that it's “a wreck a day.” In other words, every say they're there, a villager will come up to them, someone from the New Guinea government will come up to them and say, “Hey. You need to go to this village because there's a plane here.” And in many of those cases, they go there and they either find remains or they interview the locals who will say, “Yes. We heard the story of this big plane that crashed during the war, and we buried the bodies over there in the potato patch.” And in many cases they will excavate those sites and they will find remains.

MULLINS: All right. Thank you very much for telling us about the story. Bryan Bender is with the Boston Globe newspaper. His report on World War II relics and the race to recover the remains of fallen airmen is in today's Globe newspaper. You can find a link to it on our website, theworld.org.

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