Vanished: The Sixty-Year Search for the Missing Men of World War II

230 Pages·2013·5.87 MB·English

by  Wil S. Hylton

RIVERHEAD BOOKS
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hylton, Wil S.
Vanished : the sixty-year search for the missing men of World War II / by Wil S. Hylton.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-10161625-3
1. World War, 1939–1945—Aerial operations, American. 2. World War, 1939–1945—Campaigns—Palau. 3. World War, 1939–1945—
Missing in action—United States. 4. World War, 1939–1945—Missing in action—Palau. 5. Aircraft accidents—Investigation—Palau.
6. Airmen—United States—Biography. I. Title.
D790.H95 2013 2013016759
940.54'26966—dc23
Version_1
For the missing
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Maps
Epigraph
Prologue

RUMORS
ONE:
WRECKAGE
TWO:
AIRMEN
THREE:
DISCOVERY
FOUR:
LANDFALL
FIVE:
ARNETT
SIX:
PLEDGE
SEVEN:
COMBAT
EIGHT:
CONTACT
NINE:
WASTELAND
TEN:
SECRET POLICE
ELEVEN:
LAST DAYS
TWELVE:
BREAKTHROUGH
THIRTEEN:
FALLOUT
FOURTEEN:
RECOVERY
FIFTEEN:
TRAPPED
SIXTEEN:
CLOSURE
SEVENTEEN:

Bibliography
Notes
Acknowledgments
Image Credits

. . . when again bright morning dyes the sky
And waving fronds above shall touch the rain,
We give you this—that in those times
We will remember.

—HANDWRITTEN EPITAPH
BETIO ISLAND,
TARAWA
PROLOGUE
O
n a warm spring morning in 2008, a rumpled archaeologist named Eric
Emery stood at the edge of a massive barge in the middle of the Pacific
Ocean and glared down into the water.
All around him, the barge was a hive of activity. Two dozen young men
scurried about the deck, preparing for the day’s events. At one end, a small
group huddled by a contraption made of two-by-fours, tugging at its joints and
examining its design. At the other end, a long steel ramp descended to the water,
with a speedboat parked at the bottom and a cluster of scuba divers on board.
The rest of the barge was mostly filled with cargo-shipping containers, each one
placed just far enough from the others to divide the deck into a series of
hallways and rooms. One of the rooms was set up as a medical station, with an
examination table in the middle and a stretcher propped against the wall.
Another was arranged like a dive locker, with masks and fins and wetsuits
hanging from a taut line. A third room functioned as a communications hub, with
blinking machinery and streams of wire that converged on a small wooden desk,