Legacy Matters

From a coffin of ice to final rest.

After six decades, Leo Mustonen's body was finally laid to rest, no longer frozen in a mountain glacier.

Last fall two mountain climbers found the remains of a frozen airman, body intact, wearing a uniform on the Mount Mendel glacier in California.

He was removed from the glacier in a coffin of ice, carefully thawed and flown to Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii, where the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command worked to identify him.
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Authorities found female relatives of the three other airmen on board the doomed flight, tested their DNA and determined that none matched the man. Through that process of elimination, physical characteristics and a corroded military nametag on his uniform, authorities concluded the man was Leo Mustonen, his niece said.

Military officials have said the frozen airman would be eligible for interment with honors in Arlington National Cemetery.

Leo was only 22, a U.S. Army Corps cadet, when his plane disappeared after takeoff from a Sacramento airport in 1942.

This week he was laid to rest in his hometown of Brainerd, Minn, alongside his mother. Airman laid to rest

At the cemetery, Mustonen was honored with a three-volley salute and a bugler playing taps. The military paid for the funeral, as it would for any soldier who died on active duty.

In commenting on the original discovery, I learned from Varifrank , the astounding numbers of men that are still listed as officially missing from the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II.

His remains were found just a few miles from Yosemite National Park. I imagine that at some time in the past 63 years, the family of Leo Mustonen may have visted that popular park, and yet they would have never known that their lost brother was just a few miles away, sleeping peacefully on a nearby mountain peak with his fellow airmen. All the while they visted the wonders of Yosemite, not knowing that the object of their loss laid silently on that mountain on the horizon.

Leo Mustonen is just one man and the Mustonen family just one family of all the men who went missing in World War II. There are 78,976 men that are still listed as officially missing from the United States Armed forces during World War II.

Tonight, we can lower that number by 1.