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Supposed WWII skeleton found dangling above Kokoda Track

By PNG correspondent Steve Marshall

Posted August 28, 2008 07:12:00
Updated August 28, 2008 10:41:00

Found: The skeleton of what is thought to be a World War II pilot hangs in the jungle canopy along the Kokoda Track (No-Roads trekking company)

Australian, US and Japanese authorities are investigating the discovery of what is thought to be the skeleton of a World War II pilot along the Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea.

Hikers say they discovered the skeleton hanging from the jungle canopy halfway along the 96-kilometre historic World War II path.

Guide David Collins from Melbourne's No-Roads trekking company was there.

"It's swinging like somebody caught in a tree and that's when you can really see the cabling and it's the exact shape of a body, same size, everything, but it's just covered in moss," he said.

"It's exactly what it looks like, just somebody caught in a harness, in a seat harness."

Australian, US and Japanese authorities will check records to see if any pilots were reported missing in that area.

'Lost in the fog'

Mr Collins said a lot of planes went missing during the war in the general area where the skeleton was found.

"All of them were generally lost in the fog and bang they go in," he said.

Among those that flew in the area at the time were the Royal Australian Air Force's 75 and 76 Squadrons, which flew P-40 Kitthawk fighters.

American B-25 Mitchell bombers were also in the area at the time along with P-39 Airacobra fighters.

"There were a lot of aircraft lost up there during the war and a lot of Japanese aircraft as well," Mr Collins said.

Mr Collins described the location of the skeleton as being on the right side of the track heading north from Myola, about four days walk in from the Port Moresby end of the track.

He said the the tree with the skeleton had been marked with plastic to help future investigators find it again.

The remoteness of the site and the difficulties involving in locating and working with anything in the thick jungle canopy mean that it could be months before any identification of the skeleton is made.

Tags: history, world-war-2, papua-new-guinea

Comments (49)

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• jason:

  28 Aug 2008 8:05:01am

  Please follow this story, we need to know if this is an allied or japanese body. All parties involved in this conflict are a part of history and need to be laid to rest in thier rightfull place. Long live the anzac legend!!

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  • Prof S:

    28 Aug 2008 12:30:01pm

    Frankly, this skeleton now serves a purpose, it supports an assortment of life and is now part of a rich ecosystem in one of the few areas in the world where biodiverstiy is relatively untainted by human greed. Let it stay, and let us not forget that it now supports our existence on this planet.

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• Wayne:

  28 Aug 2008 8:07:43am

  Lest we forget.

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• Chris:

  28 Aug 2008 8:13:59am

  Ok great. Get it down, try and identify the body, maybe set up a memorial or something. What are we commenting on exactly?

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  • derek409:

    28 Aug 2008 8:24:56am

    The comments so far imply that if this is a body of a WW11 flyer then it should be treated with the utmost respect. Whether it be Allied or Japanese, a young man lost his life serving his Country. He did not live past his mid twenties, probably, and certainly did not live long enough. Your comments are brief but do indicate that the subject is trivial. Maybe I am wrong.

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    • Robbie:

      28 Aug 2008 8:55:22am

      Hear Hear! Doesn't matter where this person is from. He should be returned to his country and treated with respect.

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    • James:

      28 Aug 2008 9:46:14am

      It sounded to me that Chris was simply saying there wasn't much in the way of information in this story and when we know more we'll just identify the body whack a memorial somewhere and remember them that way.
      
      .. and if the tone of the message was to trivialise this well thats fine too; those who fought in WWI/II fought so that we have the choice to do that!

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• al:

  28 Aug 2008 8:29:39am

  Chris did you stop to think that this was someones father, brother, son etc . Added to this he[or possibly she] died fighting for their country. I suppose that you are safely tucked away in a Sushi bar or coffee shop somewhere.

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  • Neal:

    28 Aug 2008 8:49:09am

    Well it was obviously someone's son al, but the point I think Chris was trying to get across was that nothing really needs to be said because people know how they feel about things like this already, and automatically spare a thought for the fallen. Stop being so self righteous.

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  • laurence:

    28 Aug 2008 8:55:53am

    It just goes to show, this track should be preserved, and not destroyed by mining. What if they discover oil or some other mineral deposit under anzac cove, would they mine there as well?

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    • Mr Bean:

      28 Aug 2008 9:39:45am

      Is it really up to Australia to dictate that a poor country like PNG can't mine there?
      
      
      I thought the wars were fought so countries could be free?
      

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      • Gavin:

        28 Aug 2008 10:09:35am

        I agree We have no right to tell any country what to do with their land.
        Or should we try to start a war to protect an area involved in our war history.
        "Lest We Forget" is where wars should be, in our memories.

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      • Mick:

        28 Aug 2008 11:33:05am

        Gavin, we do have a right because we lost quite a number of our countrymen on that track, it should be protected from forestation, mining etc... there is and always still be lost soldiers on that track, some in unmarked graves and others like this soldier in the top canopy just hangin around for 60 years,
        
        do you suggest we mine Gallipolli for its high content of lead in the sand from all those bullets fired during that hellish stand-off with the turks? NO because of how many lives were lost on that beach
        
        it's part of Turkey's land but they understand the significance of the site to Australia and will preserve it for the respect of those who lost their lives fighting for their country

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• Rob:

  28 Aug 2008 8:41:20am

  its interesting that everyone seems to be suggesting that this persons death is a lot more meaningful because they died in battle. "this was someones father, brother, son etc" and regardless of circumstances should be "treated with the utmost respect" and should "be laid to rest in thier rightfull place". if it were discoverd that they did not die in the conflict would we just leave the remains on the ground or hanging from the treetops?

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  • Jane:

    28 Aug 2008 8:56:04am

    Rob it is highly unlikely any human remains will be left 'hanging' or otherwise dumped regardless of how they got to where they are. They will, like any remains be retrieved, forensically examined and then buried with care. Perhaps you and Chris who commented earlier could become friends as you appear to have a similar difficulty with comprehension.

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  • derek409:

    28 Aug 2008 9:00:26am

    Not too many people flying the airways carry parachutes in their aircraft other than those fighting in a war. I guess unless you have experienced that then it is a little difficult to comprehend. I do not believe me or others have implied that those who die in battle should be treated any different. The fact is that this poor unfortunate died a lonely death in a far away Country and deserves respect.
    We can talk about everybody Else's deaths elsewhere.

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    • Rob:

      28 Aug 2008 9:45:06am

      What youve said is a fair call and chances are that it is the body of someone that was involved in said conflict. The truth is that the report only states that it is what is thought to be the skeleton and that it is swinging like somebody caught in a tree. For all we know at the moment it could be a dead tree branch suspended by vines and covered in moss. Im not one to jump to conclusions with the full story.

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  • Wantok:

    28 Aug 2008 9:18:43am

    While I agree that all human remains should be treated with respect especially considering the tremendous sacrifices made during WW2 in PNG, I can't help thinking how this contrasts with the poignant ceremony carried out in Port Moresby at 7 mile cemetery every year. They have to have an annual mass burial of all the unclaimed children who have died from AIDS in Moresby. No one claims the bodies due to the stigma of HIV/AIDS and the children are often unidentified. It is one of the saddest things I have seen.

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• WhatThe:

  28 Aug 2008 8:43:48am

  What this does highlight is the need to preserve the Kokoda Track from mining development, who knows how many more war graves would be desecrated if this was to occur.
  
  The Kokoda Track is a pivotal part of our history and must be preserved at all costs.
  
  The poor soul just found, whether he be Aussie or Japanese must be treated with respect and given the appropriate burial deserving of some one who died in the service of his country.
  
  Lest we forget.

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  • darson:

    28 Aug 2008 9:06:32am

    The Kokoda track is an important part of our Anzac tradition but it is also on another countries sovereign soil. Yes we may request it be preserved but really it is not up to us.
    
    Isn't it interesting that we are the only animals in this world that respect the remains of a dead person? I wonder where that comes from?

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    • 2us:

      28 Aug 2008 10:12:11am

      "Isn't it interesting that we are the only animals in this world that respect the remains of a dead person?"
      
      Obviously.
      
      However if you were to state that " we are the only animals in this world that respect the remains of a deceased member of our species" Then I'd challenge that siting the behaviour of elephants.

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      • Gavin:

        28 Aug 2008 10:25:29am

        Dead bodies fertilise the ground, nothing more.
        Respect should be saved for the living.
        Dead people should live on in our memories.
        Hanging in a tree for over 60 years is one of the most natural ways to give your body back to the earth

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    • Kat:

      28 Aug 2008 10:21:47am

      I think it comes from something we intiuted long ago back in our caves......that life is precious coz once it's gone from a body it's gone for good.
      
      Take another look at the pyramids......they are there because we know that death is forever.
      
      PS I have a girlfriend who's father, a US airman, was only found a few years ago in the wreck of his plane, along with the rest of his crew...what was left of them. He's being buried in the States this week and my friend has been invited to be there. Yes, we need to know who this is and get them buried.

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• steven:

  28 Aug 2008 9:32:08am

  The point that is being made that I agree on is what is being commented upon here. It cannot be argued reasonably by anyone that the body shouldnt be recovered, identified and respectfully laid to rest somewhere.
  
  We have major issues in the world, in the government, in the schools issues and education overhaul but we what are invited to comment on what is basically a poor victim of a past war discovered by tourist.

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• Joe:

  28 Aug 2008 9:32:48am

  Always this fascination with war and its commemoration. That poor fellow in the tree lost his life, and as has already been pointed out his parent lost their child ect. All this regardless of his country of origin and in the pursuit of something that some one said was noble. Forgive me if I have difficulty is disassociating the nobility of the 'cause' from the grimly bloodied hands of the those conscripted/recruited to do the slaughtering. Australia has no shortage of War memorials and events to commemorate the the many many many wars in which this country has been engaged....and yet the wars go on and our young men are still dying abroad with guns in their hands. Maybe we should now say " let's forget".

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  • Kat:

    28 Aug 2008 10:24:12am

    Believe me, with a family who has lost someone to war in almost every generation for the past 200 years.......we will NEVER FORGET. I'm sure that goes for any family, anywhere, any time. You don't understand the sacrifice, and what it's for, that's ok, but we will never forget.

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  • 60+:

    28 Aug 2008 10:41:40am

    Joe,
    
    I think you have this the wrong way around.
    
    Soldiers go where the government of the day sends them, they don't get to choose when, where or if they die for their country. For most of the AIF the decision to join was theirs but from then on they took whatever orders they were given.
    
    Australia is unusual in that it honours and supports those who did the fighting rather more than most other countries even if the 'cause' is later seen to be less than noble.
    
    The article and much of the comment assumes that a chance observation by David Collins is of a long dead pilot. I have some doubt about that given the location but it is worth investigating and if true the remains should be treated with respect.
    
    There were large numbers of servicemen 'lost' in New Guinea whose bodies were never recovered, some known to have been killed and others who died alone in unknown places.
    
    The reason for saying "Lest we Forget" relates to both respect for the dead and a stark reminder that "noble causes" are paid for by those sent to fight, not those who decide to save 10% on the defence budget. If we forget this reality it is a lot easier to send young people to die for us, regardless of where they come from.

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    • Joe:

      28 Aug 2008 10:56:26am

      Fair enough 60+, I can see where you are coming from: that by remembering we can learn from the past and not send our young people to kill and die. It just appears to me that all this remembering is having quite the opposite effect, it often seems to me that Australia as a nation just can't wait to send its soldier off to spill the blood of others and their own. I find it very hard to buy into the whole thing. I should mention that I have every respect and sympathy for the young men concerned and fr their families too.

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    • Rob:

      28 Aug 2008 11:46:51am

      I agree on the need for memorials for the sacrifices made in the past to help defend the values we cherish from attacks by fascists, dictators and war criminals. Sixty plus years ago such a large war was fought to do just that.
      
      But here we are sixty plus years later, and the free world must now hold OUR war criminals to account at the Court in Hague. If "free world" leaders like Bush, Blair and Howard can slaughter over 100,000 people and glibly justify it, after the fact, with falsehoods, then we really haven't learned a thing from WWII.
      
      How many corpses of farmers, factory workers, their wives and children are rotting in mass graves in Iraq for this phoney WMD war? "Lest We Forget" applies not only to our soldiers lost, but to the victims of our war criminals that we elected into power.

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• Andrew:

  28 Aug 2008 10:06:23am

  Great... another excuse for Australians to continue to invade foreign soil on an annual basis, engage in "pilgrimage" and only end up annoying the locals.

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  • Stop_the_madness:

    28 Aug 2008 11:44:31am

    Or you could argue that Australians visiting sites to commemorate our war effort helps to provide employment for locals involved in tourism...

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• Al:

  28 Aug 2008 10:11:22am

  Kokoda fight was 66 years ago
  Most fabric and other materials including any "poor sods body" would have been consumed by the natural rainforest environment decades ago
  I think I just found Steve Fosset or Lord Lucan
  Do I get reward

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  • Kiap:

    28 Aug 2008 11:26:24am

    Spot on Al. I worked there in 1966 and I can tell you the jungle has grown somewhat since then! I found a concrete Japanese Shinto shrine on Bougainville only 22 years after the war had ended and the locals had already forgotten it - it was so overgrown (and only 500 yards from a road). Tropical jungle is voracious and the chance of any body hanging in a tree and still being even mildly recognisable after more than 60 years is ludicrous.

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• Robert2:

  28 Aug 2008 10:12:29am

  Our brothers to the north have many varied and unique ways in which they honour their dead. To suspend bodies in trees is not an uncommon practice, from what I have been able to read.
  
  If by chance it is the remains of a WW2 pilot or soldier, to identify those remains 63 years after the close of WW2 should not be a problem with the technology available today.

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• russ2468:

  28 Aug 2008 10:17:32am

  If it's a Japenese body, then I couldn't care less. That generation's culture during the war was an absolute disgrace. Read the Knights of Bushido if you don't believe me. Thankfully, Japanese generations since have been alot more civilised.

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  • Annabel:

    28 Aug 2008 10:40:43am

    My uncle was a RAF navigator in World War II. He was 23 when his plane went down with the loss of all crew. For over sixty years, no one knew what happened to him. He was young, bright, good-looking and full of promise, and like so many others, he simply took off, and never came back.
    
    This week, through the work of a Breton historical society, we have finally found out where his plane crashed in Brest. While I doubt there were any remains left to bury, it is of immense importance to my family to know this. When I found out, I burst into tears, and I never knew the man. For his brothers and sisters, it is a grief they have carried for sixty years.
    
    I have no idea whose body this recently found one is, and frankly find it hard to believe that a skeleton could dangle in a parachute harness for so long, but don't under-estimate the importance of closure for relatives. Life in war-time is extremely cheap. It's for precisely that reason that those losses bite so deep.

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• Synical:

  28 Aug 2008 10:25:47am

  Wait a minute, could this be an Hoax, or could it be a tree-hugging hippie left over from from the sixties or another illusion from David Blainey or Chris Angel?
  
  Interesting to see all of the comments about "Returning him to..." when we don't really have a confirmation of whom (or really if it is a whom) he (or she) could be. Notice the anti-mining lobby immediately jump onto the cause...

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  • or Cynical:

    28 Aug 2008 10:50:32am

    Yeah, sounds kinda fishy to me. Wouldn't time, birds, weather, etc have broken everything down a long time ago? And very convenient that it was hanging right over the track. They found bigfoot recently too!

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    • Mick:

      28 Aug 2008 12:12:03pm

      "Wouldn't time, birds, weather, etc have broken everything down a long time ago?"
      
      
      If this is a pilot, the uniforms they used were made from tough canvass, it would be quite possible for the uniform to protect and even preserve a human corpse,
      
      much like shoes protect the feet when a boat goes down in the ocean and you usually have feet floating (perfect example the feet still in shoes washing up in Canada recently)

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  • Miner:

    28 Aug 2008 12:21:32pm

    surely your not suggesting that someone has staged this in order to raise awarness of the historical significance of the trail now that there is the possibility of mining occuring in the region?!

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• captain swing:

  28 Aug 2008 10:28:31am

  Yes I must agree there are some topic that I would love to have a say on. This one?? If found to be what is suspected it is hard to imagine how the body could have stayed up there for this length of time! What about high winds, growth of tree, natural predators??? Pretty amazing. What better way for a pilot to die than to float in the air for so long?

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• rod:

  28 Aug 2008 10:43:37am

  Hi I doubt if this is a Japanese pilot as many were not issued with chutes. Hard to explain how it is still articulated (in one piece) after all this time? Let the authorites do their job and identify the body so it can buried with full military honours.

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• anyone:

  28 Aug 2008 10:50:37am

  Those tree look to be less than 20 years old, certainly far less than the 63 years since WW2. I think we are looking at a broken tree branch, or maybe some detached epiphites.

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• mr right:

  28 Aug 2008 11:13:04am

  I wonder if it's possible for a body to lie at the forest floor and then be pushed up into the canopy by new growth? Rainforests do grow quickly.

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  • anyone:

    28 Aug 2008 11:19:15am

    No, trees don't grow that way. They can't "lift".

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• Steve:

  28 Aug 2008 11:41:57am

  Dont get Rudd involved !!!
  
  We don't need "Digger Watch" .....

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• doug :

  28 Aug 2008 11:52:15am

  This needs to be investigated but the chances of any material surviving the conditions up there are very remote. Parachute harnesses were made of canvas fiber and the cords of silk cotton or hemp. they would have long since rotted or decayed.
  
  The tissue holding human legs onto a body would also have rotted or been eaten.
  
  I just cannot imagine how a body and harness could have survived tropical heat, rain, humidity and animals for over 60 years and still be recognizable as a body.

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• Denzil:

  28 Aug 2008 12:25:11pm

  All the hot air that the Australian Government is releasing over the need to keep the Kokoda Trail for cultural significance stinks of hypocrisy. They want to protect the region at the expense of the PNG economy.
  
  The Burrup Peninsula is home to hundreds of thousands of ancient petroglyphs and is also the site of the Flying Foam Massacre where an entire tribe of the Jaburarra people were murdered, yet this area has been systematically destroyed over the last 50 years at the expense of the Australian economy.
  
  The Australian government needs to tend to its own backyard before preaching to the neighbours.

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• Bob:

  28 Aug 2008 12:41:43pm

  Nothing to see here.
  
  Just a free publicity stunt by the No-Roads trekking company....

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