The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office announced the remains of servicemen, missing in action from World War II, have been accounted for and will be returned to their families for burial with full military honors.

They include Army Air Forces 1st Lts. William Bernier of Augusta, MT; Bryant Poulsen of Salt Lake City, UT and Herbert Young Jr. of Clarkdale, AZ. Also identified were Tech Sgts. Charles Johnston of Pittsburgh, PN and Hugh F. Moore of Elkton, MD; Staff Sgts. John E. Copeland of Dearing, KS and Charles J. Jones of Athens, GA and Sgt. Charles A. Gardner of San Francisco, CA.

All will be buried with full military honors. Gardner will be buried Dec. 4 in Arlington National Cemetery.

On April 10, 1944, Gardner, along with 11 other B-24D Liberator crew members took off from Texter Strip, Nazdab Air Field, New Guinea, on a mission to attack an anti-aircraft site at Hansa Bay. The aircraft was shot down by enemy anti-aircraft fire over the Madang Province, New Guinea. Four of the crewmen were able to parachute from the aircraft, but were reported to have died in captivity.

Following World War II, the Army Graves Registration Service (AGRS) conducted investigations and recovered the remains of three of the missing airmen. In May 1949, AGRS concluded the remaining nine crew members were unrecoverable.

In 2001, a U.S.-led team located wreckage of a B-24D that bore the tail number of this aircraft. After several surveys, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) teams excavated the site and recovered human remains and non-biological material evidence.