The remains of U.S. airmen who crashed on a Chinese mountain in World War II were placed in flag-covered metal caskets and loaded onto military transport planes Friday for return to the United States.
A military guard saluted the remains as an American flag snapped in the cold breeze at an old military airport.All 10 airmen died when their B-24 crashed into Mao'er Mountain in south China's Guangxi province. The plane was returning to a nearby base in Guangxi after bombing Japanese ships near Taiwan on Aug. 31, 1944.
The crash site lay undisturbed for 52 years until two Chinese farmers hunting for wild herbs found it on Oct. 2, Chinese officials said.
The local museum in Xingan County organized 18 trips to the nearly vertical face of the mountain to recover human remains, dog tags, pocket watches and other personal belongings, as well as parts of the plane.
After scrambling to get toeholds on walls of mud and rock, grasping vines and bamboo saplings for support, a team from the POW-MIA Office in Washington found a small, partial human remain in a test dig Tuesday. Analysts will decide whether to conduct a full excavation.
The remains found so far were placed in three black boxes, which Mei Ping, a senior Foreign Ministry official, handed to U.S. Ambassador James Sasser. He passed them to members of the U.S. honor guard.
Each box was placed in a metal casket that was covered with the flag and carried into a C-141 military transport plane. They will be flown to a laboratory in Hawaii for identification.
Military records show the youngest crew member was 19, the oldest 27. One of them died on his 24th birthday.
The United States poured aid and bomber crews into China during World War II to fight the Japanese, who had invaded the country.
About 1,000 U.S. planes went down over China during the war, and about 100 remain missing. The B-24 had just arrived earlier that August, flying "over the Hump" - the Himalayas - with bombs loaded in India.
"During those long and difficult years, countless heroic people, including many American servicemen, gave their lives for the just cause of mankind," said Mei, the Foreign Ministry official.
Sasser thanked the Chinese government for finding and excavating the site and helping "send these brave men home."