A Brother, Though Still Missing, Is No Longer Lost

A World War II fighter pilot, Lt. Joel Dean Zabel, took off on Nov. 1, 1942, in his P-39, escorting a U.S. Army transport plane back to a base in New Guinea. He was 23 years old.

Flying a similar mission was Lt. Thomas Ingram, in an identical plane. The two young pilots had become buddies in the early days of the war.

Visibility was already low that day when a sudden violent storm came up in the South Pacific. The two small fighter planes spun out of control. There was very little either pilot could do.

Both planes crashed in the jungle.

Neither was found.

For the past 57 years, William Zabel, a retired schoolteacher from Fullerton, has lived with the knowledge that his brave older brother, a war hero who would have been 80 this coming November, was lost to his family forever, unable even to have a proper memorial.

But he will bury Joel three weeks from now, in a family plot in Brea, with full military honors and at government expense.

Because his brother is coming home.

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This is a story about life’s little miracles, about a man from another era who disappeared, and about a scientific breakthrough that made his reappearance possible.

And it is about Lt. Ingram as well, because, as Lt. Zabel’s niece puts it so eloquently, “This is about the closure and the peace of mind that one family will finally realize and the continued uncertainty and loss that the other family will see revived all over again.”

Karen L. Coon lives in Los Alamitos. She still has her father, William Zabel, who is 78, and she still has an 82-year-old uncle in Colorado, oldest of the three brothers.

But she hasn’t had her Uncle Joel until now.

In 1942, no search or rescue was organized for Lt. Zabel because his plane had gone down behind enemy lines.

“And soldiers, as always, are expendable,” she understands.

According to official records later obtained by the family, a joint American-Australian grave registration team set out in December 1948, a full six years after the accident, to do aerial reconnaissance of the area believed to be the crash site.

Nothing was found.

It wasn’t until 40 years later, in 1988, that a U.S. Army identification laboratory team made a closer inspection of the site. The team reported back its evidence and made its recommendations where to dig.

Not until May 1991 did an actual excavation begin. A piece from an old plane’s tail wing was one of the things found.

Another was a femoral bone from a human leg.

No belongings were found, no skeletal remains, no other wreckage. That was it. A single thighbone.

But in 1995, Karen Coon recalls, “DNA testing apparently became acceptable and valid enough proof in the eyes of our government for determining the identification of remains.”

A blood sample was taken from her father, Lt. Zabel’s closest living relative. A sample was also taken from a nephew of Lt. Ingram.

It took more than a year before the families found out the results. William Zabel was notified that his DNA and that from the bone were a match.

His brother had been found.

An official from a government bureau called the Casualty and Mortuary Division came to see Joel Zabel’s survivors to discuss arrangements. He was very kind, and, it seemed to Karen Coon, a little nervous.

She told him so.

“You’d be surprised how many people kick me out of the house,” the man said.

With WWII veterans it was usually cordial this way, kin having had so long for emotional scars to heal. Whereas with later wars, particularly Vietnam, resentment and anger often remained.

It was requested by this family that Lt. Zabel’s last remains be cremated in New Guinea and returned home. A kind of habeas corpus, 57 years after the fact.

“Since my uncle’s death in 1942, our family never in a lifetime believed that this event was capable of happening,” Karen Coon says.

And even though there is no actual corpse, a military escort will accompany the lieutenant back to California, where his ashes will be laid to rest July 17 in his parents’ grave.

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William Zabel, suffering from emphysema and concerned for 57 years that the mystery of his brother’s disappearance would never be solved, can have some peace of mind at last.

His daughter says she hopes Ingram’s relatives and others like them will someday have their own questions answered. She remains in awe at what DNA can do.

“Even more awesome,” she says, “is the realization that in the future, there may never again be any such thing as an Unknown Soldier.”

Not all stories have happy endings. But most stories, given the time, do eventually come to an end.

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles CA 90053. E-mail: mike .downey@latimes.com