Early in our stay in Likan, a group of villagers led my dad, my sister and me to the site. I remember the shrill sound of insects, the remoteness, a sense of the sacred as the wreckage came into view. Though there was much I was coming to love about living in Papua New Guinea, I was also still grieving the separation from a place — the United States — and the people I had left a few months before and knew I would not see again for four years, which is a long time for a 12-year-old. To stand before this wreckage was to be keenly aware that others had also been far from home. To gaze at the United States Army Air Forces insignia on the fuselage, to touch the rivets, to pick up one of the many .50-caliber cartridges scattered in the soil, to consider that two lives ended here — it provided a larger context in which to put my own distance from home, my own place in the world.

Source: International New York Times September 06, 2021 09:00 UTC