ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, January 13, 1997 TAG: 9701130066
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: A Cuppa Joe
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY
The effort to recover the remains of Salem's George Hobart Pierpont and his World War II flight crew has begun.
U.S. government representatives traveled last week to Beijing, where they will accept some remains from Chinese officials. The repatriation ceremony is tentatively set for Friday.
Some Americans also will visit the crash site, in a deep ravine in Guangxi Province on China's southern coast, to determine resources needed for a full-scale excavation, probably in spring.
In November, Chinese President Jiang Zemin gave photos of five U.S. military dog tags and a videotape of the wreckage to President Clinton. The tags matched the names of crew members on a downed B-24 bomber.
With Hobart Pierpont as pilot, the plane left its base at Liuchow, China, on Aug. 31, 1944, to bomb Japanese ships in Takao Harbor in Formosa, now Taiwan.
``They were radioed a message that said, `Don't come back ... the base is under attack from the Japanese,''' said Larry Greer, a spokesman for the Defense Department's POW-MIA office in Washington, who is on the trip.
``No one to this day knew what happened to them.''
Touchstone to a faraway war
Salem mourned the loss of Hobart Pierpont, from a prominent family that owned what is now the Old Virginia Brick Co.
The discovery of the remains puts a human face on a war that many of us know only from films and our parents' stories.
U.S. anthropologists will conduct a field review to find Caucasoid bones and separate others, possibly including those of animals.
The remains will go to the Defense Department's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii for forensic analysis. Lab staff members will use dental records, bone tests and, if necessary, DNA testing to identify the crewmen.
``I don't think there's any question that those 10 crew members died at that location,'' Greer said. ``The task is to figure out which is which.''
But the process is complicated, and no one knows when it will be complete.
Eventually, if all goes well, the remains will be returned to the states for burial - at Arlington National Cemetery, if the families so choose.
Long wait is over
After the initial stories of the airmen appeared in December, a representative from ABC-TV's ``PrimeTime Live'' called Doris Haynes of Roanoke County and asked for any photographs she had of Pierpont and his crew.
She and her late husband, Bud Haynes, were friends of Hobart Pierpont at Langley Field.
Bud Haynes and Pierpont both flew bombing missions in China. Haynes' diary entries are the basis of the book ``General Chennault's Secret Weapon: The B-24 in China,'' written by A.B. ``Bud'' Feuer of South Roanoke.
A woman from Hampton sent Nancy Mountcastle, Pierpont's sister, a letter saying she had known the pilot - ``always such a nice gentleman'' - at Langley. She enclosed a photograph of him and his crew in front of their plane.
Mountcastle lives in Monkton, Md., with her husband, Vernon, a celebrated neuroscientist who grew up in Roanoke.
The discovery of the crash site sparked interest both in the World War II generation and in increasingly appreciative baby boomers.
"This is just unbelievable after so long a time," Doris Haynes said. "We kept hoping while the war was going on and soon thereafter that they would find something."
Greer has spoken with relatives of most of the lost airmen.
"They were very proud and looking forward to the world learning the story again after 52 years," he said.
It's a history lesson for the world.
What's your story? Call me at 981-3256, send e-mail to kenn@roanoke.infi.net, or write to P.O. Box 2491, Roanoke 24010.
LENGTH: Medium: 75 linesby CNB