Alaska team exhumes unidentified WWII soldier as DNA hopes rise

In late June, a DPAA recovery crew unearthed the remains of an unidentified World War II airman, labeled “X-3,” from a rain-soaked grave at Sitka’s national cemetery in Alaska. The soldier was one of sixteen aboard a C-53B that went down near Cold Bay after Japan bombed Unalaska in June 1942; ten bodies were never recovered and six were temporarily buried by a local trapper before being reinterred. Decades later, historian Michael Livingston and veteran Chris Pfeiffer pressed the Department of Defense to disinter the lone unknown, believing he might be 2nd Lt. Eugene Christensen, a Nebraska native.

After a careful dig that located the casket three feet below the surface, DPAA specialists will now employ dental comparison and DNA testing to confirm his identity, aiming to give the family closure and honor the promise to bring home the missing. The case is part of a broader effort to identify over 81,000 U.S. service members still unaccounted for from WWII, Korea and Vietnam, with roughly 1,900 unidentified remains in Hawaii and 120 in Alaska.