AT LAST -- HOME FROM WW II U.S. BOMBER CREW BURIED.

Byline: LISA FRIEDMAN Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- The nieces and nephew of Staff Sgt. William C. Cameron knew him mainly from family stories about the young surfer and football player who left Los Angeles to fight in World War II and disappeared during a 1943 reconnaissance mission.

But they gathered Wednesday at Arlington National Ceremony to honor their uncle's service and offer what recollections they could as Cameron and his eight crewmen -- whose remains were recently discovered in Papua New Guinea and identified -- finally returned home.

``Everybody would have been happy to see this,'' Cameron's niece, Gretchen Moore of Paramount, said of the ceremony that included a flyover, 21-gun salute and horse-drawn caisson burial.

``It was overwhelming,'' added Lyn Ilg of Azusa, who provided the DNA used to positively identify Cameron. ``Seeing that plane go overhead was just the most amazing thing I had ever seen.''

Cameron, a Los Angeles High School graduate who grew up in Pico Heights, was 19 when he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps. He disappeared a year later while serving as a gunner aboard a B-24 Liberator that left Dobodura, New Guinea -- now Papua New Guinea -- on an armed mission over the Bismarck Sea.

The military concluded that the bomber crashed into the sea. The airmen were presumed dead and their remains unrecoverable.

It wasn't until a villager in the Morobe Province discovered the wreckage in 2001 and the military undertook a major excavation that Cameron's family learned anything concrete about his fate. By then, his parents and two sisters had died, leaving Moore and her cousins to wrap up the final details of their uncle's life and death.

``I wish somebody was still alive who could tell us more about him,'' said Moore, 54. ``I don't have any memory except seeing pictures of him and hearing stories about him.''

Terry Wylie was about 4 when his uncle joined the service and is the only one of the cousins with firsthand memories of Cameron.

``Just little things -- I was pretty young,'' said Wylie, now 67 and a retired Southern California Edison employee living in Montclair. Still, he said, he was surprised at how many of those little things he has been able to recall since the military informed him his uncle's remains had been identified.

There were the blackout curtains his grandmother made; the time spent with his uncle at Muscle Beach; the way Cameron would put Wylie on his lap and let the boy ``drive'' home.

``It was more emotional than I thought it would be,'' Wylie said. ``It just brought all the old memories all over again.''

Wylie said he recently found a box of letters his uncle wrote while overseas. They include one to Wylie's mother, who was Cameron's sister, saying ``the guys had eaten up all the fudge and wondered when the next batch was coming.''

Moore said relatives of other crewmen, whose remains were discovered with Cameron's, helped fill in the some of the blanks this week with stories and letters of their own. Moore said some family members told of letters her grandmother had written to them, sharing the pain of lost sons.

Also identified were: 1st Lt. William M. Hafner of Norfolk, Va.; 2nd Lt. Arthur C. Armacost III of Cincinnati; 2nd Lt. David R. Eppright of Warrensburg, Mo.; 2nd Lt. Charles F. Feucht of Reynoldsburg, Ohio; Technical Sgt. Raymond S. Cisneros of San Antonio, Texas; Technical Sgt. Alfred W. Hill of Temple, Okla.; Technical Sgt. James G. Lascelles of New York, N.Y.; and Staff Sgt. Wilburn W. Rozzell of Duncan, Okla.

All were members of the 63rd Bombardment Squadron, 43 Bombardment Group.

Larry Greer, spokesman for the Department of Defense Missing Personnel Office, said what actually happened to the aircraft might always remain a mystery. What the military does know is that the last contact anyone had with crew members was when they radioed Nov. 4, 1943, that they had just attacked a Japanese convoy. At the time, they were about 50 miles north of Kaveing Island.

``They could have run out of gas. They could have been shot down. They could have run into bad weather,'' Greer said.

Wylie can recall the tears and family chaos surrounding the telegrams about Cameron -- first in 1943, notifying the family of his disappearance, then in 1948, informing the family he was presumed dead. Wylie said he thinks relatives who have since died would have been pleased Cameron was finally brought home.

A separate ceremony is expected but not yet scheduled at Rose Hills Memorial Park & Mortuary in Whittier, where Cameron's parents and sisters are buried.

Moore said she and her cousins are busy contacting relatives and sharing the precious few photographs, letters and stories they can.

``There's no one else to tell us about him,'' she said. ``They all took their memories with them.''

lisa.friedman(at)langnews.com

[phone]

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1) DNA from Lynn Ilg, 58, of Azusa was used to identify her uncle who was killed before she was born in a World War II plane crash in what is now Papua New Guinea. His body was found at the crash site in 2001.

Sarah Reingewirtz/Staff Photographer

(2 -- 3 -- color) B-24 Liberator bombers head home from a World War II mission. Staff Sgt. William C. Cameron, far right, and his crewmates died on such a mission.