Documentary screening highlights group’s important work of recovering America’s Missing in Action
With more than 81,600 Americans still missing from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War, the Gulf Wars and other recent conflicts, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, 21st century technologies are being used to help reclaim as many as possible.
To better appreciate the importance of such a project, as well as the science and technology being deployed to do the job, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is hosting a documentary screening and discussion Wednesday, March 2, about Project Recover, which locates and assists in the recovery of U.S. service personnel missing in action.
Scott Althaus, director of the UI’s Cline Center for Advanced Social Research, spearheaded the effort to bring the story of Project Recover to campus to highlight how academic researchers and volunteers are successfully working together to help find more of those missing and bring some closure to long-grieving families.
Althaus has a personal interest in the project, as well, after the national news in spring 2018 focused on Project Recover’s discovery of a downed B-24 bomber from WWII that included one of his relatives, 2nd Lt. Thomas Kelly Jr., among its lost crew.
Founded in 2012, Project Recover has already located some 50 aircraft associated with more than 170 MIAs lost since World War II. Working in collaboration with the University of Delaware and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, this nonprofit organization utilizes underwater robotics and cutting-edge sensor technology, for example, to help search for, locate and assist in the recovery of the remains of people who have given the “last full measure of devotion” in service to their country.
Image courtesy of Project Recover
On March 2, founder Pat Scannon and Derek Abbey, president and CEO of Project Recover, will discuss their efforts after a screening of the feature-length documentary about the project, “To What Remains,” beginning at 7 p.m. in the Lincoln Hall Theater, 702 S. Wright St., Urbana. The event is free and open to the public. What’s especially nice is that people who live elsewhere, and perhaps some older local veterans who may not want to venture on campus, can watch a live stream of the event online via Zoom by pre-registering here.
This event will show the work being done to provide MIA families with the closure and peace they deserve years after our nation’s past conflicts in which so many have given their lives for our freedoms. Project Recover also provides students and researchers with opportunities in science and technology, history, leadership, diplomacy, etc., through meaningful field work. I can’t think of a more impactful way to educate people about the importance of service to one’s country than by learning about the individual stories and sacrifices of these missing service members and helping to bring them home to their families.
And there are many across the country still waiting years later to find out what happened to their loved ones and hoping for their return. But with the more sophisticated tools and technologies available just in the last few years, there have been at least three service members from the east-central Illinois area who have since been found and repatriated in similar expeditions to the ones carried out by Project Recover.
Two of those men were located by another non-profit organization, History Flight, and the News-Gazette reported in November 2019 that Marine Pfc. Jack Benson van Zandt’s remains were returned from Betio Island in the Tarawa Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, where he was killed during the November 1943 battle there. History Flight used dental records and anthropological analysis for identification. His 1939 Oakwood High School ring was also recovered.
Then, in July 2020, the remains of Pfc. John Gillen of Champaign were identified and returned as another casualty from Tarawa—one of the bloodiest battles in Marine Corps history in which 1,696 Americans were killed in 76 hours.
Pfc. Clarence Brotherton of Gibson City was killed in Europe during the battle of Hurtgen Forrest in late 1944, but his remains were finally identified and then repatriated in April 2020 after using the same dental and anthropological analyses. Between 33,000 and 55,000 American soldiers were killed or wounded in this battle that raged for nearly three months.
The commitment, perseverance and respect organizations like Project Recover have to their mission of finding these service members who gave their lives for our country are the same sentiments for which we should all feel responsible. The military ethos is to leave no one behind, no matter how long it takes. That, too, is part of the costly price of freedom.