Frank S. Robinson wrote an interesting, though chilling, book review of “We Carry Their Bones: A Florida Horror Story.”
“This book by anthropologist/archeologist Erin Kimmerle relates her authorized official investigations at the site of the Dozier School, a “reform school” in Florida’s panhandle, operating from 1900 to 2011. Actually a prison. Incarcerating thousands of boys, sentenced for mostly minor notional offenses, some as young as five, mostly Black.
The resolution caught my attention: “Kimmerle made great efforts not only to find burials but then to identify whose. Generally, the bodies had been interred unceremoniously, hence with little left to exhume. But the team was able to extract DNA even from bone fragments and thereby identify many victims. Amazing modern science…” So it is.
“Yet, though we are embodied in our physical selves while alive, afterward the dead corporeal remains should lose meaning. Our connections to our dead reside in our hearts and minds, our remembrance, not in their disintegrated bones.
“Those families already knew, basically, what had befallen their kin. Receiving a box of remains really adds nothing. I think we’re too fixated on such physicality; it’s a kind of superstition.”
I agree with about half of that. It is a bit of superstition, I suppose. But the box of remains does signify something significant.
Civil War
I saw this piece on CBS News Sunday Morning: Honoring a Civil War veteran lost to history.
“There is an unmarked African American burial ground on their farm [in Tennessee]. ‘They took me there, and for that, I’m eternally grateful,’ said Cheryl. “Because we had no idea it was there. We only had a hunch.”
“Cheryl hired an archeology team with experience finding America’s missing-in-action from more recent wars. Of the 38 graves they found here, they zeroed in on one – its size, date, and fragmentary remains matched every known detail of her ancestor.
“‘Sunday Morning’ was there with the families and local veterans when Private Sandy Wills’ remains were placed in a casket, and solemnly marched from the knoll, through green fields, to a waiting hearse.”
WWII
The Operation 85 project aims to identify unknown servicemen who perished aboard the USS Arizona during the attack on Pearl Harbor.
“In September 1947, after the pressures of war had subsided, 170 unknown servicemen were exhumed from their graves in Hawaii and brought to the Schofield Barracks Central Identification Laboratory, where over 100 were identified and their families subsequently notified. The disinterment was a remarkable success despite the remaining 70 men being declared ‘unrecoverable.’ Those men were reburied at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu (unofficially known as Punchbowl Cemetery because of its location at Punchbowl Crater).
“It is these ‘unrecoverable’ men that Kevin Kline, grandnephew of Gunner’s Mate Second Class Robert Edwin Kline, who perished aboard the Arizona, wants the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) to identify and return to their families.”
9/11
In January 2024, the “1,650th victim of 9/11 was named after 22 years. More than 1,100 remain unidentified.”
With the amazing advancement of technology, we’ll likely be able to find more victims of airplane crashes, weather disasters, and terrorist activities. Is it worth it? Worth, as a subjective term, is difficult to encapsulate.
I support the efforts because it completes the line from their death for whatever tragic reason to burial by their families, who, even if they are generations removed, still feel a sense of pride and dignity. If that is a superstition, then so be it.
