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Defense POW/MIA Accounting AgencyFulfilling Our Nation's Promise

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## News Release

# Airman Missing In Action From WWII Identified (Wasilewski)

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced todaythat the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from World War II, have been identifiedand returned to his family for burial with full military honors.

Army Air Forces 2nd Lt. Emil T. Wasilewski, 22, of Chicago, will be buried on June 26, atArlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C. On Sept. 13, 1944, Wasilewski and eightother crew members were on a B-17G Flying Fortress that crashed near Neustaedt-on-the-Werra,Germany. Only one of the crewmen is known to have successfully parachuted out of the aircraftbefore in crashed. The remaining eight crewmen were buried by German forces in a cemetery inNeustaedt.

Following the war, U.S. Army Graves Registration personnel attempted to recover theremains of the eight men, but were only able to move the remains of one man to a U.S. militarycemetery in Holland. In 1953, with access to eastern Germany restricted by the Soviet Union, theremains of the seven remaining unaccounted-for crewmen—including Wasilewski—weredeclared non-recoverable.

In 1991, a German national who was digging a grave in the cemetery in Neustaedt,discovered a metal U.S. military identification tag and notified officials. German burial lawrestricted further site investigation until 2007, when the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command(JPAC) surveyed the area. In 2008, the site was excavated and the team recovered humanremains and military equipment.

Scientists from the JPAC and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory usedforensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence, including dental comparisons and ychromosomeDNA—which matched that of Wasilewski’s nephew—in the identification of hisremains.

Of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II, more than 400,000 died. At theend of the war, the U.S. government was unable to recover and identify approximately 79,000Americans. Today, more than 73,000 are unaccounted for from the conflict.

For additional information on the Defense Department’s mission to account for missingAmericans, visit the DPMO web site at http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo or call (703) 699-1420.

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