Copiague airman killed in Japanese prison fire during World War II finally laid to rest

ARLINGTON, Va. — More than eight decades after Sgt. Henry "Harry" Younge of Copiague was killed during a Tokyo prison fire before the end of World War II, the airman was finally reunited with his family and laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery.

On Monday, Younge's flag-draped coffin arrived by horse-drawn carriage to the nation's largest and most hallowed cemetery. Earlier in the day, family members displayed Young's medals, and photos of the young airman in uniform, during a memorial service.

"The family had to wait 81 years, but the government never gave up on identifying his remains," said Robert Harry Clement, who was named for the uncle he never met. "... The family knows he's home. And he's finally going to get to take the pack off and rest in peace."

Tail gunner captured

Younge, a 1943 Amityville High School graduate, was a 20-year-old tail gunner on a B-29 Superfortress that was shot down in 1945 during a nighttime mission over Kawasaki, Japan. Six members of his crew died, while five others, including Younge, bailed out but were captured and taken to the Tokyo Military Prison.

On May 25, 1945, the United States conducted one of the largest air raids of the war against Tokyo. The bombs, records show, ignited a fire that spread to the prison, where all 62 U.S. prisoners of war, who were to be tried under Japan’s "Enemy Airman’s Act," died. 

Younge's badly burned body was deemed "nonrecoverable" and buried in a mass grave on the prison grounds. Less than a year later the remains were excavated by U.S. officials. 

The American Graves Registration Service was able to identify 25 of the airmen — four of whom were later buried in Long Island National Cemetery in Farmingdale — while the rest, including Younge, were interred as "unknowns" at Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.

A solemn vow

It would take years of methodical archival work by a team of forensic anthropologists — and a solemn vow from a daughter to her mother — to finally get Harry home.

In 2019, Janet Clement, a retired elementary school teacher from Richmond, Virginia, made a deathbed promise to her 96-year-old mother, Elizabeth "Betty" Clement, that she'd help bring home her brother Harry Younge.

"We have brought it closer to maybe a final closure," Clement said. "But also we've opened the door for so many other families, not just in the military or directly connected to Harry and his death, but everywhere. This new DNA technique [used to identify Younge] helps to assure that people who are missing from years ago might now possibly be identified. And other families can get an answer to the question that my grandmother asked: 'What happened to Harry?'" 

In April 1945, Younge was set to be interviewed live on Eddie Cantor’s popular NBC national radio broadcast from an island in the Pacific Ocean.

A war correspondent had written a story about the 20-year-old trumpet player who'd entertained crewmates during long flights over the open ocean.

Knowing the truth

Younge's family were invited to Cantor’s Manhattan studio for the show, but shortly before the broadcast, they were informed Younge wasn’t available for the interview. 

The family later learned that Younge's four-engine heavy bomber had been shot down. Few other details were provided.

In 2022, following fierce advocacy by many families, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency exhumed 39 remains associated with the fire. To date, 12 of those men have been identified.

"The world needs to understand what happened with these men," said Michael Krehl, a retired masonry contractor from Florida who lived in Centerport in the early 1980s and who sparked the initial effort to identify the airmen, including his maternal grandfather, Sgt. Leonard McNeil.

Lynn Olsen of Laurel, on the island's North Fork, was shocked to learn last August that the DPAA had positively accounted for Younge, her uncle.

"I couldn't believe that after all these years my uncle had been identified, and that he'd finally be coming home," Olsen said. "My grandmother and my mother and her two sisters never got over the grief."

Katie Rasdorf, a World War II researcher who assisted the families throughout the process, said "It's been a long journey ... I think it's really important to them to have the closure to be able to honorably lay them to rest on American soil."