Red tape delays return of WWII airman's body

Maybe you like to walk in a cemetery where a loved one is buried, where workers cut the grass between the gravestones, where it's the same year-after-year - accessible, familiar.
Altoona native Sheldon Chambers' resting place is nothing like that: It's on the other side of the world, in a remote province of an unfamiliar country, on an exposed mountainside, where the winds howl and no one comes routinely to visit.
After 66 years, his loved ones want him back to place his body - or what can be found of it - in a cemetery where they can visit once in a while and plant flowers.
That recovery was supposed to happen this year, but it didn't, and they're unhappy about it.
Chambers was a 23-year-old Army Air Force co-pilot when his B24 bomber, the "Hot as Hell," crashed in Arunachal province in northeastern India in January 1944 during World War II, killing all eight aboard.
No one knew what happened until 2006, when a private researcher from Arizona named Clayton Kuhles discovered the wreckage and notified family members.
Since then, the U.S. Joint Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Command has visited the site three times, once for reconnaissance and twice to excavate but without discovering human remains.
JPAC was planning to return this fall to finish excavating, in the belief workers would find remains.
"[But] the Government of India (GOI) was not able to schedule the necessary talks for JPAC to gain clearance," JPAC wrote to the families in June. "Consequently, JPAC was forced to reschedule the excavation for September - November 2011."
It was actually "bureaucratic bungling," according to Gary Zaetz of Arizona, nephew of the plane's navigator and spokesman for the Hot as Hell families.
The area is remote, rugged, in dispute between China and India and prone to insurgency, heightening the need for firm arrangements for guides, communication frequencies, access and coordination with the provincial government, according to JPAC.
"Despite our best efforts, no time window became available" to make those arrangements, according to JPAC.
07/11/10 William Kibler/AltoonaMirror.com

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Categories: Foreign Nov 2010