Remains of World War II soldier from Detroit identified 80 years after plane shot down
Excerpt:
The remains of a World War II soldier from Detroit that were identified 80 years after his plane was shot down on a bombing mission will be laid to rest in Kansas.
On Dec. 1, 1943, U.S. Army Air Forces 2nd Lt. John E. McLauchlen Jr., 25, was piloting a B-24J Liberator bomber on a bombing mission from Panagarh, India, to the Insein Railroad Yard north of Rangoon, Burma. According to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, his plane was struck by anti-aircraft fire and the left wing burst into flames.
Witnesses said his aircraft entered a steep dive and vanished below the clouds. Three enemy aircraft followed the plane into the clouds and he was not heard from again. The remains of the crew were not recovered or identified during the war and they were all later declared missing in action.
In 1947, the American Grave Registration Service (AGRS) recovered the remains of eight people involved in a B-24 Liberator crash near Yodayadet, Burma. Local witnesses told AGRS at the time that there were no survivors from the crash and Japanese forces told them to bury the remains in two large graves.
The remains recovered from those graves were known as Unknowns X-505A, X-505B, X-505C, X-505D, X-505E, X-505F, X-505G, and X-505H Barrackpore (X-505A-H). They were unable to be identified at the time and were interred as unknowns in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP), Honolulu, Hawaii, also known as the Punchbowl.
In October 2020, after receiving a family request for disinterment, the DPAA exhumed the remains from the cemetery and sent them to the DPAA laboratory for analysis. Scientists used anthropological analysis and material evidence while working to identify the remains. The Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis.
McLauchlen’s remains were identified and he was accounted for by the DPAA on Jan. 25, 2024. McLauchlen’s remains will be interred on July 8 at the Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery in Kansas. The Belden-Larkin Funeral Home will perform graveside services following the interment.
Mexican Cartels Increasingly Targeting Hawaii for Meth and Fentanyl Trafficking
Excerpt:
Locals tout the tangerine sunsets from Oahu’s quieter west coast, but homeless tents that dot the ocean’s edge hint at a growing problem — poisons in paradise brought in by Mexican cartels.
The dominant super cartels — Sinaloa and its rival, the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación, known as CJNG — run drug pipelines through California and Nevada to flood Oahu with meth and other drugs, including fentanyl, said Victor Vazquez, assistant special agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s operations in Hawaii.
“It’s alarming,” he said. “If it wasn’t for the ocean, the drugs would be driven straight to Waikiki,” referring to the bustling tourist spot of Honolulu’s south shore, lined with high-rise hotels, restaurants and shops.
Similar to remote Alaska, cartels face less competition in Hawaii, when compared to the mainland, so they can demand a higher price. Drug networks also sneak cocaine and heroin into Hawaii, along with the meth and fentanyl, said U.S. Attorney Clare E. Connors, who oversees federal prosecutors in the District of Hawaii.
.....Drug shipments first arrive in the state capital of Honolulu, often smuggled in air passengers’ luggage or in mailed packages, she said. Then they are trafficked to the other Hawaiian islands. “We also still see a lot of it coming in through body carry,” Connors said, meaning from airline passengers hiding it on their bodies or in carry-on luggage.
“It is somehow making its way through TSA operations,” she said, referring to the federal Transportation Security Administration checkpoints.
Mexican cartels’ determination to target Hawaii — despite its remote location in the middle of the Pacific Ocean — illustrates a key money-making strategy to reach their tentacles far beyond major U.S. cities and into more remote states with fewer competitors and fewer police resources.
.....To better understand the scope of the drug crisis in Hawaii, a Courier Journal reporter spent several days on Oahu in June talking to the DEA, local police, an emergency room doctor and leaders and participants of a leeward region recovery program for Native Hawaiian men, most of whom served time in jail.
Synthetic drugs, such as fentanyl and meth, are blamed in nearly all fatal drug poisonings across the U.S., according to the DEA’s 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment.
Gary Yabuta, a veteran lawman and retired Maui police chief, said meth has remained the dominant drug plaguing Hawaii for decades. The drug brings a jolt of energy, but also can lead to paranoia and violence. Meth doesn’t always get the full blame it deserves, doctors say, because it can kill slowly over time, often causing heart failure.
Meth on the streets today, dubbed “ice,” typically has a purity close to 100%, much more lethal than the 50% purity of one-pot home labs popular across the U.S. years ago. “I call methamphetamine death a cancer ― you die one day at a time,” said Yabuta, who now works in Honolulu overseeing the state’s High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task forces.
“It’s smuggled across the border by the cartel gatekeepers,” Yabuta said. “It has devastated Hawaii.” Yabuta and DEA agents also have noticed an increase in fentanyl, a manmade opioid that now reigns as the No. 1 drug killing Americans.
A “Blue 30” or fake oxycodone pain pill sells for as low as $2 in Los Angeles, but can fetch $16 or more in Hawaii, exemplifying what attracts the cartel powerhouses to the islands, Vazquez said. Seven out of every 10 pills seized in the U.S. by the DEA now contain a potentially lethal dose, according to the agency’s cautionary “One Pill Can Kill” campaign.