加新社/一群义工和卑诗省考古家本月会到中国，寻找失踪美国空军中尉加纳(Lt. Ernest Garner，图)的遗骸。年仅22岁的加纳，1945年4月14日在中国失踪，他当时执行空袭日本任务，在返回陕西省西安市途中坠机，军机当场撞死地面一名中国女子。
60年来，加纳的命运一直是个谜团。现在加纳的侄子艾伦(Allen Garner)及卑诗省考古学家科普(Stan Copp)与一队志愿者，本月稍晚启程前往中国，希望发掘加纳的遗骸。
现在加纳的家人获悉，加纳当年坠机死亡，后来被日军草草埋葬。此后的数十年来，他的坟墓几经迁移。中国一位大学教授一直在寻找加纳的遗骸，现在义工有信心找到它。
The Canadian Press – ONLINE EDITION
Decades later, group continues search for soldiers still missing in action
By: Dene Moore, The Canadian Press
Posted: 9/11/2010 5:02 AM
VANCOUVER – Lt. Ernest Garner was just 22 years old when he disappeared over China on April 14, 1945, on his way back from a bombing run on Japanese installations.
Garner’s plane slammed into the ground on his return flight to the ancient city of Xian, in Shaanxi province, killing a Chinese woman on the ground in front of her 10-year-old son.
For 60 years, Garner’s fate was a mystery and he remained one of the thousands of soldiers still missing in action from the Second World War.
Now a team of volunteers that includes one of his nephews and a British Columbia archeologist will travel to China later this month hoping to recover the young U.S. Air Force pilot’s remains.
“He was my Dad’s oldest brother,” wrote Allen Garner, of Tifton, Ga., one of two nephews to contact Moore’s Marauders, a volunteer group dedicated to helping locate those lost soldiers.
“My Dad is about to be 80 and is the last surviving sibling in his family. He was 15 when Ernest did not return from a bombing and strafing mission….
“Our family never knew what happened to him for over 60 years.”
Garner’s family now knows that the young U.S. Air Force pilot died in the crash and was buried by the Japanese, his burial site along the roadway marked with a plaque.
“But then they were renovating the road, they removed Lt. Garner’s remains, reburied him,” said Stan Copp, the Vancouver archeologist who will travel to China to oversee the excavation of Garner’s remains.
“Unfortunately that spot became the location for a house for a local fellow. He’s digging his foundation, comes across Lt. Garner, removes Lt. Garner again and reburied him in his courtyard. So we are going to that courtyard.”
A Chinese university professor has been working on finding Garner’s remains and the group is confident they know where he’s buried. For certainty, they’ll compare the DNA from the remains to one of the nephews to ensure they’ve got the right man.
More than 100,000 U.S. soldiers remain missing from the First and Second World Wars, Korea and Vietnam conflicts. While Canada traditionally buried its war dead in the countries where they were killed, the United States military has not and those soldiers are still officially missing in action.
One of those soldiers was the uncle of Ken Moore, the founder of the Marauders.
Moore’s Uncle Billy was a B-29 pilot who disappeared in the Pacific in 1945. Like Garner, his fate remained a family mystery for years — a mystery Moore pledged to his mother he’d try to solve.
After 27 years of asking questions, he found his uncle’s submerged bomber in the ocean off Alamagan Island, in the Marianas Islands, in 1999. Five years later he located his uncle’s grave site — in the Soviet Union.
“I grew up watching my mother with this tremendous hole in her heart since I was a little boy, over her concern about never knowing what happened to her youngest brother, Billy,” Moore said in a telephone interview from his home in Scottsdale, Ariz.
“You must understand that people will go through their entire lives never having closure. It’s a pain my mother suffered all her life.”
He was able to find his uncle before his mother died and that search inspired him to help others.
“Every day we get from two to 40 inquiries asking about missing relatives. We sort through them and do the best that we can,” Moore said. The charitable group has 41 active files.
“You have family members who, even 65 years later, are still waiting for closure — what happened to Uncle Bob, what happened to Uncle Ernest in this case?” Copp said.
While in China, the team will also be searching for the grave site of Staff Sgt. William Lynch, a marine who died while a Japanese prisoner of war but only after two attempts to escape from the notorious Mukden POW camp.
“I believe we should support the military,” said Copp, a professor at Langara College in Vancouver, explaining why he gives his time to the group.
“Governments send the military to do their dirty work… people say evil soldiers and whatnot but, you know, they’re doing their job. One of my nephews is in the service right now, and a lot of my family was in the service.”
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/breakingnews/decades-later-group-continues-search-for-soldiers-still-missing-in-action-106945443.html
