NAYPYIDAW: The remains of what may be members of the United States army who died during World War 2 in Myanmar, were repatriated from the Mandalay International Airport in Tada-U.
The remains were recovered from the Sagaing region, in a mission carried out by the Defence Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Agency of the US Department of Defence, according to The Myanmar Times.
“Over 75 years ago, brave Americans gave their lives on a river bank in Sagaing, fighting for peace, justice and freedom far from home,” the US embassy’s Deputy Chief of Mission George Sibley said at the ceremony on Thursday.
“Today, we recommit to those noble values as we repatriate the possible remains of those US citizens and honour their service and their sacrifices.”
The remains will be flown to the agency’s laboratory at the Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Oahu, Hawaii for analysis and potential identification.
There are 505 US service members still unaccounted for in Myanmar, known as Burma during World War 2.
The remains of 23 soldiers have been identified after three recovery missions carried out in 2003 and 2004, and nine since 2013.
The remains repatriated on Thursday were believed to be a crew of seven from a B-25 bomber that went missing in February 1944.
Myanmar was then a British colony occupied by the Japanese.
The plane’s wreckage was located in 1946 and some possible remains were recovered last year in the same region, but have not yet resulted in an identification.
More than 72,000 Americans remain unaccounted for from World War 2, more than 7,800 from the Korean War, and 1,585 from the conflict in Vietnam.