Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
Sixty-two years ago, the family of a Sweet Home woman lost two brothers to World War II. The fate of one of the two remained a mystery until recently, when officials got help from a local woman in identifying his remains.
The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) used a blood sample from Cheryl Munts to identify the remains of the man, John Milton Meisner. In June, Munts attended a funeral at Arlington Cemetery for Meisner and the other eight members of his flight crew.
His brother, William Bradford Meisner, who went by Bradford, was a member of the Merchant Marine and died when his ship was torpedoed. John Milton Meisner, known as Milton, was a bombardier aboard an Army Air Corps B-24 Liberator.
On the morning of Oct. 9, 1944, the crew took off on a training mission from Nadzab, New Guinea. The aircraft was not seen again. It was speculated that it had encountered bad weather.
The plane, which lacked modern radar gear, crashed into a mountainside in the fog, Munts said.
In early 2002, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Port Moresby reported the discovery of two dog tags by villagers. The dog tags were reportedly found at a World War II crash site in the Morobe Province.
Specialists from JPAC went to Papua New Guinea in November 2002 to investigate several World War II aircraft losses. The team interviewed the two villagers, who turned over the dog tags, and then surveyed the site where aircraft wreckage and remains were found.
A team of JPAC specialists and New Guinea specialists mounted a full-scale excavation of the site in January and February 2003 and discovered additional human remains and crew-related artifacts from the wreckage field.
“About three summers ago, probably summer 2004, they contacted my mom,” said Munts, who teaches chemistry at Sweet Home High School. “She’s elderly, so she referred them to me, and they used my mitochondrial DNA to identify him. As a science teacher, it’s just amazing to me.”
Milton’s mother and Munts’ maternal grandmother were sisters.
“I knew his mother, and I knew his sister very well,” Munts said. “I took care of her house when I was a teenager and young adult. They knew he had been lost (in the South Pacific), but they didn’t know where.”
Munts’ mother and her cousins were close, she said. Finding out what happened gave her mother closure.
Munts attended the special funeral at Arlington on June 27. Milton and four of the other crew members were buried there. Four were buried elsewhere. Also buried were group remains representing all nine crewmen.
“It was a chance for me to take my two sons and show them how our country values its veterans,” Munts said. “I was sitting between two brothers of these men.”
The two men were weeping, she said. At the end of the ceremony, two large bomber-style planes flew over, a rifle volley was fired and “Taps” echoed across the rolling hills. Then flags were presented with the words, “On behalf of a grateful nation….
“This young soldier comes up to me and presents the flag,” she said. “The biggest mistake was looking into his eyes. I started crying.”
She said she saw in those eyes all of her own kids, her students, who have gone off to war.
“No matter what you think about this Iraq war, you value your veterans,” she said. “Respect them for what they did. They deserve our support and our respect.”
She didn’t even know Milton, she said. She was born in 1955, 11 years after he died, but she watched all of the older boys she grew up with go off to war in Vietnam, and she remembers how this nation treated its Vietnam veterans.
Munts said all of these thoughts swirled through her mind, distilling into a single thought: that these men and their families should be respected and deserve the thanks of their country.
That’s the reason one of her first stops in Washington, D.C, with her sons, was at the Vietnam Memorial, she said.
Following the funeral service, Munts and other families followed the group casket to the burial site in Arlington Cemetery, she said.
“You just look forever and as far as you can see are white headstones.”
Those headstones represent “sacrifice, from people who are buried there and their families all the way back to the Civil War,” she said.
In preparation for the funeral, the family had to decide where to bury Milton.
Munts told her mother, “He’s been with those men 50-plus years in the jungle,” she said. “My dad and mom talked about it, and Dad’s a World War II veteran. They decided to do it at Arlington.”
After the funeral, Munts assured her mother it was the right decision.
The JPAC provided a book about the crew, along with photos, and personal possessions, such as dog tags, a bracelet and necklace, to Munts’ mother. The JPAC also had three items that it could not link to any crewmen.
Munts was able to identify one, a ring, she said. The ring had an inscription: “To Milton from Bradford.”
The Army didn’t know that the two men went by their middle names, so it was unable to tell who owned the ring.
“I was able to give my mother that ring,” she said.
The efforts of the JPAC are important, she said. “No matter what, MIA or POW, you never give up on them. It brings closure for the family. The family deserves this. They gave their sons, or daughters now; and this is the least you can do for the family.”
Visiting Washington, D.C., the Army provided Munts and her two sons a military escort. They were able to tour the Pentagon and visit the 9/11 memorial under construction there.
“I cried there too,” she said. “We tend to forget about the Pentagon with 9/11.”
Munts’ sons are Brien, 18, and Eric, 14. She is married to Ken Munts, who owns and operates the Chevron station in Sweet Home.