Lost at Sea: Searching for World War II Casualties in Underwater Contexts

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "A Decade of DPAA: Challenges and Opportunities to the Accounting Mission", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

During World War II, an estimated 27,000 American service members went missing from water contexts in the Pacific theater, from ship sinkings and aircraft losses. Immediately after the war, these were only rarely pursued due to technological limitations. Today, the pursuit of underwater losses is one of the fastest growing areas of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA). This paper will explore the accounting efforts from 1945 to 2024 to resolve these underwater casualties, through the lenses of case development, projects and partnerships, and field operations.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• A Decade of DPAA: Challenges and Opportunities to the Accounting Mission   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow