Subscribe
Jobs
Cars
Real Estate
Apts
Classifieds
Shop
VAN WERT, Ohio – A mystery that began with a telegram sent in September 1944 was solved by an e-mail sent in March.
The 65-year-old mystery concerned the fate of Staff Sgt. Earl E. Yoh, 20, of Scott, Ohio, who was listed as missing in action after the B-24 bomber on which he was a gunner was shot down and crashed into the ocean during a bombing mission in the South Pacific.
About two years after the original telegram was received by Earl Yoh’s father, Joshua Yoh Sr., the U.S. government declared the missing serviceman dead. The Yoh family received a certificate signed by President Harry Truman that spoke of Earl Yoh in the past tense as well as $10,000 from the soldier’s military life insurance policy.
By the time Yoh’s father died in 1969, a monument had been placed in the family cemetery in Van Wert County bearing his missing son’s name.
Despite the indications that his brother had perished, Dale Yoh and his fraternal twin, Gale, remained hopeful that their brother somehow survived.
As years passed, Dale’s hair grayed and lines on his face deepened into wrinkles. But in his memories, he saw Earl frozen in time, forever the strapping young man who loved playing basketball and baseball while he was in high school.
Earl Yoh was the fourth son in the family to be drafted. Eventually, twins Dale and Gale would also serve. But Earl was the only one who never came home. And despite his brother’s desperate hope – he guessed he’s cried a thousand times for his brother – Earl’s fate was revealed in that March e-mail.
“If he would have lived to be an old man, it would have been easier on us. This is tough,” Dale said.
Earl Yoh had been in the service for about 13 months on Sept. 1, 1944, according to brother Dale, 77, of Burnsville, Minn., who has cobbled together his brother’s last day from a series of reports and stories he has heard over the years.
The mission was straightforward: 15 U.S. planes would fly over Koror Town on one of the Palau Islands in the South Pacific, bombing residential areas, barracks, warehouses and loose stores.
The U.S. planes began to bomb amid anti-aircraft fire from the Japanese on the ground. Within minutes, one of the four engines on the B-24 Liberator that carried Sgt. Yoh had caught fire.
The pilot, hoping to keep the fire from spreading, turned the plane. After the maneuver, the burning wing fell off the aircraft. Three crew members parachuted to the ground from the doomed plane, leaving eight men – including Earl Yoh – onboard as the B-24 plunged into the Pacific Ocean.
It was the only plane lost during the mission.
A day or so later, after finishing his shift at the local grain elevator, Joshua Yoh Sr. returned home with the telegram he received and told his wife their son was missing in action.
Gale Yoh, who lives in Haviland, Ohio, said he was home when his mother heard the news that left her crying.
“All night, yeah. I never will forget that,” Gale said.
In the years since Earl was listed as missing in action, his parents died as did most of his siblings. By 2004, Dale said he began to wonder whether he would live long enough to learn his brother’s fate.
Then, in 2004, a dive team assembled by the BentProp Project made a dive off the Palau Islands.
BentProp Project is a team of volunteers with expertise in areas like history, aviation, diving and navigation. The team searches and assists with identifying U.S. servicemen missing in action from World War II, according to Patrick Scannon, team leader for the group that focuses its efforts on the Palau Islands area.
As with all searches the group conducts, Scannon said other volunteers donate their time because each wants to demonstrate his gratitude for the sacrifices made by both the missing servicemen and their families.
“I want people to know that somebody really is thinking about them,” Scannon said.
The group, which had searched for that particular B-24 for 10 years, had to narrow down the potential site of the crash – beginning with a simple “X” on a map that, in fact, represented a vast amount of ocean.
Also potentially working against the group was the chance the crash might have occurred beyond the barrier reef around the island, where the ocean floor plunges from a depth of about 70 feet to about 2,000 feet, making recovery impossible.
After receiving a particularly good tip from a local spear fisherman, the BentProp Project team dived in 2004 and met success when diver Jennifer Powers saw a formation that was clearly a propeller.
“We found her hugging the propeller,” Scannon said.
The missing B-24 Liberator had been found scattered across an “enormous debris field,” Scannon said.
Whenever BentProp Project members locate a crash, they hand over location details to the government agency charged with recovering and identifying missing servicemen – the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, or JPAC.
JPAC conducts about 75 missions a year, according to Air Force Lt. Col. Wayne Perry. The command searches for the remains of servicemen mostly from World War II and often in Southeast Asian countries including Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia.
Working in about 45-day project stints, Perry said JPAC conducted an initial underwater investigation of the B-24 crash site in 2004, and the excavation began in 2005.
The meticulous process of removing remains found at the site was hampered somewhat by the possibility that wreckage could shift, potentially endangering divers, Perry said.
By February of this year, all remains had been retrieved, and DNA tests had confirmed the servicemen’s identities.
“We’re all proud of it here because it was an arduous mission underwater,” Perry said. “It was a fairly successful mission for us.”
Dale Yoh said he received an e-mail from JPAC in March that simply said the final identification of remains recovered from the B-24 crash site had been completed and that the Army Casualty Office would soon be in contact.
The message contained no clear answer, so Dale replied and asked whether his brother’s remains had been retrieved and identified.
The answer came, and Dale finally had an answer.
“I think there was always hope,” he said.
Even though their brother’s remains have yet to arrive in Ohio, the brothers are busy preparing for Earl Yoh’s funeral, set for May 9. They are also fielding questions from family, friends and the curious about their brother.
“He was worth whatever effort we put in and more,” Dale said, while surrounded by scraps of paper, photos and one of the two sets of dog tags retrieved from the ocean floor.
Included among those scraps of paper is a copy of the last letter Earl Yoh sent to his family, dated Aug. 31, 1944, from New Guinea.
In his letter, Earl asks about his family, tells them he has increased the amount of pay sent to them to $75 a month, and he ends with, “Well I guess I had better say good night for now. Love, Your Son, Earl.”
As he speaks about his brother and shares the mementos, tears often appear in Dale Yoh’s eyes.
“And now we’re going to have some closure, finally, after 65 years.”
