Combat Anthropology: How the DPAA Gives Names Back to the Dead
History
By Lauren Coontz | September 18, 2021
OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, Neb. —
In a World War II bomber hangar that once housed the Enola Gay and Bockscar B-29 bombers, which dropped the two atomic bombs on Japan, forensic anthropologist Traci Van Deest, Ph.D., and her team of scientists have several skeletons on display. These are the remains of American service members killed decades ago, far from home. Van Deest and her team of investigators’ goal is to give these Americans back their names.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, or DPAA, works diligently at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, to identify the remains of missing service members. Dedicated investigators scour the world for the remains of missing American military personnel ranging from airmen who crashed in remote locations in Laos or Vietnam to sailors still entombed within the hulls of capsized warships in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Many of the remains never returned to the US homeland because they could not be positively identified in the immediate aftermath of combat or because they perished in locations previously difficult to reach — such as those sailors still inside the USS Arizona, which the Japanese sank during their attack on Pearl Harbor.
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