In the spring of 1945, my wife Dana's mother, Betty, was a third grader at Jim Thorpe Elementary School on Chicago’s far south side  One afternoon in May, Betty's Uncle Otto came to school to collect Betty for an unplanned early dismissal. Uncle Otto was not someone who usually collected Betty from school, and with his car, too (Betty’s mother Erna usually walked her home from school; her father Joseph had passed away before she was one-years-old). Betty remembers recognizing immediately that something was wrong, and she wondered where her mother was.

An official from the United States Army had just visited the family’s home to inform Erna that Betty's eldest brother, Justice, a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army Air Corps operating from Guam in the Pacific, was presumed dead following a fire that destroyed the Tokyo Military Prison where he was being held. The B-29 Superfortress bomber on which Justice was operating as an observer had been shot down during a mission in April, with six members of the crew perishing and Justice and four others managing to bail out before the fiery crash. They were captured and taken prisoner. On May 26, 1945 the U.S. firebombed Tokyo, burning more than twenty square miles of the city, unwittingly killing American GIs being held captive, including Justice. When the war was over, what were believed to be unidentified American remains from the prison fire were re-interred at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.

Today Betty is eighty-eight-years-old. She recalls how attentive, kind, and doting her brother Justice was, and how she found her mother lying in a heap on the living room floor weeping when she got home. She still misses Justice. He was only twenty-four in the spring of 1945, recently married to Chicagoan Dora Bell Newbert. Justice and Dora Bell had a baby girl they called Faith. At the time of Justice’s death, Faith was not yet two-years-old.

Like the families of so many other vibrant and promising young people lost in the Second World War--more than 400,000 Americans died, with as many as 85,000,000 lost globally over six years of fighting--the Bew-tal-uh family, though devastated, held out hope that Justice's remains would be found and sent home for a proper burial and service. And perhaps some closure. When the war in the Pacific finally ended in August following President Truman’s decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan—less than three months after the Tokyo Prison Fire–there was no word about Justice. Then a full year passed, a painful anniversary. No word. Then several years turned into several decades. Until finally, from a large immediate family of eight children and two parents, today Betty Angotti Buttala is the only surviving member: Liberty, Justice, Gertrude Equality, Lee Truth, Eleanor, Ellen Illinois, and Bob, her siblings, have all passed. 

Eight months ago, on January 14, 2025, the defense department announced that it had positively identified the remains of Second Lieutenant Justice Buttala using contemporary mitochondrial DNA analysis. Betty, her sister Ellen Ko-sich Bew-tal-uh, and her nephew Robert submitted DNA samples a year earlier when officials got the go-ahead to begin testing unidentified remains in the Manila Cemetery, with Robert serving as the family’s representative to what is called The Tokyo Prison Fire Project. Sadly, Ellen passed away at age 93 a few months before Justice’s remains were identified. This summer, Betty and Justice's grandchildren were invited to select a national cemetery for his burial with full military honors (now scheduled for Monday, October 6). Justice has grandchildren in the Baltimore metro area (Elissa, Chris, and Kevin) and in Chicago (James). Arlington National Cemetery was chosen as a fitting final resting place. Mitchell Bew-tal-uh, one of Justice’s great nephews and himself in the service, will accompany Justice’s remains on the flight to Virginia. Eighty years after her brother's death and that painful departure from her third grade classroom, Betty, surrounded by dozens of family members–including two called Justice–will finally welcome her brother home.

To me, this remarkable story screams hope, and for all of its horrors, it helps me imagine a better world. When you consider that the federal POW/MIA Accounting Agency’s efforts to continue searching and to conduct expensive DNA testing on long-lost remains from another era were spurred on by one actively-engaged and persistent citizen who would not relent–Mike Krel of Orlando, Florida, whose grandfather perished in the same fire and whose remains were also found just months after Justice’s burial–and that the political support for the operation resulted from a bi-partisan senate group...well, this long-awaited reunion of Betty and her brother Justice remind me that hope has no statute of limitations, that one citizen committed to making a difference for others can still do so, and that even in a period of bitter political division we are all inspired by a good that cannot be measured in dollars, clicks, or votes. Justice is coming home.