It’s never too late to bring closure for relatives of the people who served in the military and lost their lives.

Military scientists recently identified the remains of a U.S. Army airman from Michigan who died with 10 other crew members when a bomber crashed in India after a World War II bombing raid on Japan. The airman was U.S. Army Air Forces Flight Officer Chester L. Rinke of Marquette, who will be buried at Seville, Ohio, on a date yet to be determined.

According to an Associated Press story, Rinke was the flight officer on a B-29 Superfortress when it crashed into a rice paddy on June 26, 1944. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said all crew members died instantly.

Scientists used techniques such as mitochondrial DNA to identify Rinke’s remains, the DPAA said. Seven of the 11 members were recovered within days of the crash, but Rinke’s remains, as well as those of three others, were “non-recoverable.” Additional searches of the crash site in 2014, 2018 and 2019, though, led to the discovery of wreckage and human remains.

This is the second recent case regarding someone from the Upper Peninsula who has been identified after having died in World War II.

Ensign William Finnegan, who was born in Bessemer, died on Dec. 7, 1941 in the attack on Pearl Harbor. According to the U.S. Navy, Finnegan was among 388 service members from the USS Oklahoma who were unaccounted for. Since the beginning of Project Oklahoma in 2015, 356 of those service members have been identified. Remains are identified, the U.S. Navy said, through DNA reference samples from USS Oklahoma families.

Finnegan was to have been laid to rest earlier this month in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

The families of those who gave their lives to serving their country certainly had their memories of their fallen relatives, but sometimes, they need more tangible evidence of their service, and a place to grieve.

Having a gravesite provides a true memorial for people to remember their loved ones and their service, and in fact, for the public to honor them. Thus, we heartily applaud the efforts to use DNA and other methods to identify remains and bring them to a proper home.