In a moving ceremony at the end of U.S. Defence Secretary Ashton Carter’s visit, India on Wednesday handed over the remains of U.S. soldiers killed in plane crashes during World War II in India’s Northeast.
“Today’s ceremony is a testament to the deepening India-U.S. defence partnership and a reflection of our shared commitment to universal values,” Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said in a statement.
The U.S. has flown several air missions over the Himalayas called the ‘hump’ from 1942 onwards to counter the Japanese. The U.S. had approached India with coordinates of the air crashes about 12 years ago and after initial search by the Army the eventual recovery was undertaken by a specialist team from the U.S. Defence Prisoners of War/Missing in Action Accounting Agency (DPAA).
One set of remains was recovered in Arunachal Pradesh between September 12 and November 17, 2015, while a second set was unilaterally turned over to DPAA by a third party from the same region. The remains that were turned over to the DPAA are possibly related to a C-109 that crashed on July 17, 1945, travelling from Jorhat, India, to Hsinching, China.
