US search for missing airmen in China gains new attention after Xi–Trump summit
Access to crash sites and wartime Chinese archives is key to resolving about 700 cases and bringing missing US servicemen home
For more than eight decades, the remains of US fighter pilot Morton Sher lay unrecovered in China. A photograph of a memorial to him in a Hunan village eventually helped investigators find where his plane crashed in 1943.
Sher was buried in his hometown of Greenville, South Carolina, in December 2025, a homecoming that offers a rare example of what US-China cooperation can achieve for families of missing servicemen.
