Wil S. Hylton

Wil S. Hylton's new book is Vanished: The Sixty-Year Search for the Missing Men of World War II.

From his Q & A with John Lewis at Baltimore magazine:

How many miles did you log while reporting this story, and how long did it take to complete the book?

It turned out that one missing airplane leads to all corners of the earth. I spent a total of four years searching for clues and answers, and traveled more than 60,000 miles. At one point, I joined an elite military team on a barge in the Pacific Ocean. At another, I trekked through the Micronesian jungle in search of a secret Japanese prison. I flew on the last working B-24 bomber, scuba dived on classified sites in the Palau islands, and even visited the military's human remains recovery laboratory in Hawaii, where I stood in a room filled with skeletons of American soldiers who died half a century ago. So there were a lot of miles, but never a dull moment.

What, for you, was the most difficult aspect of the story to comprehend and share with readers?

It's very difficult for outsiders to understand the grief that haunts families of the missing. When there's no body to bury, no formal cause of death, and no explanation of what happened, the loss is hard to process or accept. In many cases, the families spend decades holding on to the possibility that the person might still be alive. This is true of soldiers in the same way it would be true of a missing child. Maybe the guy is trapped somewhere, or in a secret prison, or lost, or maybe he has amnesia. Very few MIA families have not given these questions some thought. And without giving away too much, I'll say that sometimes this turns out to be...[read on]

Visit Wil S. Hylton's website.

--Marshal Zeringue