ALBANY, N.Y. — The remains of a World War II airman have been identified and will be returned to his hometown for burial nearly 70 years after his plane and two others slammed into a remote, jungle-covered mountainside in the South Pacific.
DNA samples provided by relatives matched those of Sgt. Dominick Licari, who was 31 when his A-20 Havoc bomber crashed into a mountain in Papua-New Guinea on March 13, 1944.
Augustus "Mort" Licari said Thursday he and his only other surviving sibling, Katherine Frank, of Darien, Conn., were notified last week their brother's bone fragments and dog tags were recovered last year at the crash site by a team from the U.S. Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command.
Mort Licari said he was driving from New Jersey to his home in Summerfield, Fla., when he got the call informing him his brother's remains had been identified.
"I pulled over and kind of got myself together," Licari said Thursday.
The pilot of the doomed plane, 2nd Lt. Valorie Pollard, of California, also was killed and listed as missing in action.
Mort Licari said he and several nieces and nephews plan to be at the Albany airport when a plane with a casket bearing his brother's remains arrives Aug. 2. A military honor guard will carry the casket to a hearse, which will take the remains 70 miles west to Dominick Licari's hometown of Frankfort, where a funeral and burial will be held Aug. 6.
Officials at the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office in Washington confirmed Sgt. Licari's remains had been identified through DNA testing. Lt. Col. Melinda Morgan said none of the other bone fragments found at the crash site has been identified as Pollard's. They are included in a separate set of group remains believed to be those of Pollard and Licari that will be buried later, likely at Arlington National Cemetery.
