Burial Climaxes Haunted Search for WWII Victim

A World War II airman who died with eight crewmen when their bomber was shot down in the South Pacific 42 years ago was buried Friday in Whittier, one of five crew members whose remains were recovered this year after a haunted search by the plane’s sole survivor.

“We are thankful that he has been returned to us,” said the survivor, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Jose Holguin, standing at the grave before the flag-covered casket of Sgt. Henry Garcia.

“We are thankful that he is no longer among the unknown. We are thankful that he is home.”

Holguin, the only crew member to walk away from the mangled, burning plane in a New Guinea jungle, traced the remains of Garcia and four others to graves marked “Unknown” in Hawaii.

The five were officially identified in February--the result of two trips Holguin made to New Guinea and the efforts of a U.S. senator whose help Holguin solicited. The other four fliers were buried in similar military funerals across the country earlier this year.

Holguin, who left his dead crew behind at the crash site on the island of New Britain after vowing to one day return to bury them, began his search for their remains almost 40 years later.

“During all those years, whenever there was a quiet moment, I would think,” said Holguin, 64, now a vice principal at Verdugo Hills High School. “I would see their bodies by the wreckage and I would think, ‘I have to get back soon to bring them home.’ ”

Garcia was laid to rest in a grave between two olive trees as a mariachi band played “Las Golondrinas”--a traditional Spanish farewell--and his 2 brothers, 4 children, 17 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren looked on. Soldiers fired a 21-gun salute.

Years of Mourning

For Garcia’s family, the funeral marked the end of years of uneasy mourning and uncertain yearning for the return of a loved one.

“I’ve had this empty place in my heart for 40 years,” said Garcia’s only son, John Henry Garcia, 43, who as a youngster refused to believe his father was dead. “Finally, after all these years, he has come home.”

Garcia stood in silence at the grave, his eyes hidden by sunglasses, his lips trembling, as Holguin pinned on him the medals the elder Garcia won more than 40 years ago.

At an earlier service at the Rose Hills Memorial Chapel, dozens of Garcia’s relatives and friends filed past a framed, black-and-white photograph of a young, smiling Garcia, who was killed at the age of 29. Wreathes and bouquets were sprinkled with tiny American flags.

Henry Garcia’s wife, Evelyn, died at the age of 60 in 1973 and is buried not far from where her husband now lies. She had paid tribute to him each Memorial Day with a visit to an East Los Angeles monument dedicated to Mexican-Americans killed in World War II.

‘Our Wait Is Now Over’

“Our wait is now over, and maybe my dad’s wait is over, too” said John Henry Garcia of Hacienda Heights, youngest of the couple’s four children.

Holguin, the crew’s navigator, escaped death by parachuting from the plane before it crashed. Hours later, bullets in his jaw and leg, his back broken, Holguin emerged from the thicket and fired his pistol--two shots in quick succession, a signal for the men to rendezvous after a separation. No one returned the fire.

He crept to the wreckage of the plane, which had been christened “The Naughty But Nice,” and saw the mangled bodies of some of his men.

“I knew I couldn’t stay there,” Holguin said. “There was no food and I would starve to death. But I didn’t want to leave my men there. They were a part of me.”

He said he “battled it out” emotionally and finally made “the hardest decision of my life.”

Was Able to Break Away

“The only thing I could do was to tell the men, in my silent way, that I couldn’t take them with me but I would be back to take care of them,” Holguin said. “In that way, I was able to break away from there.”

A few weeks later, after wandering through the jungle and finding shelter with natives, Holguin was captured by the Japanese. He was imprisoned for 26 months.

After his release in 1945, he said, he gave military authorities details about the crash and they promised to look for the bodies. When Holguin returned to the United States, he visited the families of the crew and told them what had happened.

Holguin remained on active duty in the Air Force, and his military responsibilities prevented him from returning to New Guinea, he said, but the tortured visions of the missing men would not fade.

“We had lived together, eaten together, slept side by side and shared all the perils of war together,” he said. “I couldn’t stop thinking about them. . . . They were human beings I loved and there was no one to take care of them--no dignity, no shelter. It was sort of like I had abandoned loved ones to fare for themselves when they were no longer able to.”

In 1981, after retiring from the military, he decided to return to New Guinea to begin the hunt.

“I felt there was really nothing that could keep me back,” he said. “The commitment to them began to present itself more and more emphatically. ‘When are you going to do it?’ I would ask myself. I was getting into my 60s and time was getting short.”

During his trips, Holguin located the plane and uncovered government documents showing that an Army engineering team in 1949 had stumbled upon the crash site and found the remains of several bodies.

But the bodies could not be identified and were buried without names at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

Repeated Calls, Letters

After repeated calls and letters proved futile, Holguin enlisted the help of U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston to persuade the military to exhume the bodies and determine whether they were indeed members of Holguin’s crew.

Not all of the victims’ relatives were pleased by Holguin’s success. The return of the victims’ remains awakened decades-old grief and memories. The widow of one of the missing men had since remarried and declined to attend the man’s recent funeral.

But Holguin said his conscience would not have permitted him to leave the past alone. He helped bury the five--flying around the country for the others’ funerals--but he himself is still not at rest.

“There are four more men I haven’t found,” he said.

Holguin plans to return to New Guinea again next year.

“I have one or two leads I want to follow,” he said. “I know it’s a long-shot type of thing, but so was finding these five.”