![]() Mission Reports Combat Crews Individual Photos Photos POW KIA MACR Overseas Graves TAPSī-17 Crew Requirements and Standard Operating ProceduresĬrew Composition Crewmen Duties Clothing Oxygen Navigators Bombardiers Gunners Observers Personnel Aircraft Nose Art B-17 Thunderbird Ground Support Uniforms Journals More Info ![]() “I think this is the reason - for me to find out about him.Home About Us Contact Us Donate Newsletters 8th AFHS Links FAQ Facebook Search “I never thought I’d live this long, and I kept asking why,” Spearmint said softly. Spearmint, whose brothers John and Frank also served in World War II, said she wishes the full story had been revealed earlier.Īll of her siblings deserved to know the truth about their brother Joe, she said. “Why didn’t they tell us what happened then?” Spearmint asked. One thing she’d like to know is why the military never shared those details with her family. Spearmint said the details about her brother’s death leave her with many questions. 17 plaque dedication, it was unclear as of last week whether anyone will make the trip to Germany. “They could have brushed this off, but they are trying to make everything right,” he said.Īlthough Hanau has invited the Prokop family to send a representative the Feb. Hanau deserves credit for honoring Prokop and the other airmen instead of sweeping a dark episode in its history under the rug, Kuchwara said. The post is also trying to arrange for the ceremonies in Scranton and Hanau to be livestreamed between the cities. Kuchwara, who has since met with Spearmint and other family members, said he anticipates representatives of the German government will attend the remembrance service at Cathedral Cemetery. “She was quiet for a little bit,” he said. Kuchwara said he called Spearmint and told her about the Hanau commemoration before gently breaking the news about what the city’s historians had learned about her brother’s death. The email, which was sent by Spearmint, included her phone number. He contacted a couple of Prokop families who were not related to the airman before another veteran remembered receiving an email about Joseph Prokop three years ago while collecting the names of servicemen for inclusion on a monument at Scranton Veterans Memorial Park that Post 25 will help dedicate in July. 17 at VFW Post 25, post commander Jim Kuchwara misunderstood at first, wondering who was calling him from Jermyn. Marrano’s office in turn started making inquiries, contacting local veterans organizations in the United States. ![]() When Hanau decided it would memorialize the three airmen with a plaque, organizers in the German city reached out to the consular office in Frankfurt for assistance in locating any surviving next of kin. State Department’s Consulate General in Frankfurt, said in an email. More research identified where two B-17s crashed in Hanau that February and the exact location where the American prisoners were slain, Mark Marrano, deputy consular chief with the U.S. Hanau officials uncovered the long-forgotten information about the killing of the airmen while planning “Life in War,” an exhibition to commemorate 75th anniversary of the end of World War II and the city’s virtual destruction in March 1945 ahead of its liberation from Nazi control. Prokop’s remains were repatriated and buried at Cathedral Cemetery four years later. “I was young and I guess there’s a lot they didn’t want to tell me, but as far as I remember they said he was shot down and he was in the plane and there was one survivor,” Spearmint said.Īfter their deaths, Prokop and other airmen were initially buried in Hanau before their bodies were exhumed in the summer of 1945 and reinterred at the Lorraine American Cemetery in St. Spearmint, who was still in high school when her parents learned in March 1945 that her brother had been declared missing in action, said her family did not receive any details.Įven when the military finally acknowledged in January 1946 that he was presume d dead, it was mostly generalities.
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