World War II ended on August 15, 1945 . Nearly 406,000 of the 16 million Americans who served in the war died. At the end of the war, the USG was unable to recover, identify, and bury approximately 79,000 as known persons. They include those buried with honor as unknowns, those lost at sea, and those missing in action. That number also includes the 1,100 sailors entombed in the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor. Today, more than 78,000 Americans remain unaccounted-for from WW II.

Following the war, the USG had full access to most of the former battle areas. This significantly assisted the recovery of the war dead. The U.S. created two Army identification laboratories, one each in Japan and Germany. Those laboratories worked only World War II cases and made recoveries on both sides of the globe from 1945 to 1951, working until all known leads were exhausted.

In 1976, the Department of Defense established the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii (now part of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command or JPAC), as a permanent group. One of its assigned missions is to recover and identify all U.S. Service members killed in past wars. Their initial World War II program focused on Papua New Guinea, due to the large number of sites known to be there and the fact that the sites were accessible. Today JPAC investigate and excavate World War II sites worldwide.