Preliminary Investigations of Missing American Service Members in Papua New Guinea

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Applying the Power of Partnerships to the Search for America's Missing in Action" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The University of Queensland (UQ) has partnered with DPAA to bring renewed focus to a search in East New Britain, Papua New Guinea, that has been continuing intermittently since an aircraft went missing in 1943. The operation is challenging because we have only a general idea of where the plane went down and it falls on the most extreme terrain on earth. There are also significant numbers of wartime aircraft losses reported in the area, Allied and Japanese, so finding the right plane is difficult. A small team of experienced PNG researchers assessed the terrain and established relationships with local villagers to facilitate access to their lands and ask about crash sites. A larger team followed up with methods and results to be highlighted in this poster. This work builds on UQ’s archaeological and PNG expertise to expand UQCHU’s repertoire beyond Australia. We envision this search will create research opportunities between UQ, DPAA and others such as the University of Papua New Guinea and the PNG National Museum. Such research addresses broader questions regarding archaeological technicalities of the work entailed in DPAA projects and the social and political dynamics of searching for missing American service members in non-Western societies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Applying the Power of Partnerships to the Search for America's Missing in Action   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32881