Dozens of Black pilots disappeared during WWII. Who are the men still lost?

Today, the Tuskegee Airmen are celebrated as American heroes. Black men who fought in World War II for a country that was still brutally segregated. Eventually, these men who shattered the color line as combat pilots would be awarded some of the nation's highest honors. In 2007, the Tuskegee Airmen were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by President George W. Bush. The Tuskegee Airmen helped win a war, and you helped change our nation for the better.

Yours is the story of the human spirit, and it ends like all great stories to do with wisdom and lessons and hope for tomorrow.

But some never got to see those tributes because they never made it home, and their families felt they were forgotten by the U.S. government.

“The families I got to know I think would be happy with someone knocking on their door, picking up the phone saying, "You know what?”

We haven't forgotten about your dad. We haven't forgotten about your brother. We haven't forgotten about your uncle or something. But to have crickets, you know, is probably the most hurtful thing for them." In PR investigative correspondent Cheryl W. Thompson is the author of a book that published earlier this year. It's called Forgotten Souls, The Search for the Lost Tuskegee Airmen. It tells the stories of 27 Black Airmen who went missing during flights overseas, leaving their families forever changed and still looking for answers.

When we come back, I sit down with Cheryl to talk about her personal connection to the Airmen and what she learned over years of research about who these men were.

We'll be right back. Each story you hear on Planet Money starts with a question.

“What happens if we refund tariffs? Why are Grocery so expensive?”

An NPR we stand for your right to be curious because the forces shaping our world can be hard to see. Follow NPR's Planet Money wherever you get your podcasts and start seeing how the economy really works. We're back with the Sunday story. I'm here with Cheryl W. Thompson. Cheryl, welcome to the show. And thank you for being here. Hi, I wish it thanks for having me.

I know that you have a personal connection to the Tuskegee Airmen. Tell me about that. Is that why you decided to write the book? So yeah, my dad was a Tuskegee Airmen. There were actually Tuskegee Airmen were more than pilots. There were like 14,000 of them who did all kinds of things. But he was actually in the flying school and I write about how he didn't quite make it to the plane because he had a little trouble landing. When you're in the middle of a war, you got to be a plane. It also explains a lot about why I drive the way I do because it's called me to drive.

So is that why? Because you have this personal connection. He was one of the Tuskegee Airmen, even though he wasn't a pilot.

“Is that why you wanted to do this book? Is this how you got interested in it?”

So actually, how I got interested? Because he used to tell the stories. He used to talk about the guys used to come to the house, you know, when I was a kid growing up.

And I always think, gosh, I should have paid closer attention.

What I was a kid to the stories that he told the men who would come to the house. And he was in the cadet class with some really well-known pilots, you know, McGee and the guy who is actually on the cover of the book William F. Williams. They were all in the same cadet class, but I digress. So how this came about was when before I came to MPI I spent 22 years at the Washington Post. And one day I was talking with a colleague who had done this amazing story on the remains of someone they thought was an airman.

Tuskegee Airmen, they found over in Austria. And I said to him, I said, do you think there were others? And he says, oh yeah, there were others. And so he knew, you know, about my dad or I'm sure I had talked about it at Nonsum at some point during my time there. And I said to him, I said, this is your book. And he said, no, this is your book. And so a couple years passed, I thought about it and thought about it.

And you know, as a reporter, I can write a new story.

And so it took me a few years to sort of get up the courage to go. Okay, can I do this? Can I really pull this off? And then I decided, okay, let me see what I can do and pitch it and see if somebody will buy into it. Well, I mean, we're so glad that you did take this on. And you know, I mean, we'll get into obviously because you're talking about people who went missing in action. So there's loss and we'll get into that.

But the first I want to talk to you about how this book, it really shines a light on the lives of these men.

“Was there anything that surprised you about their personal lives when you started doing this research?”

I think the one thing that surprised me most was really how young they were. But in their letters and in their conversations with relatives, they seem so much older because they had to grow up so quickly. But most of them were fresh out of college. The oldest one was 28. The youngest one I believe was 20. And it just, they were just starting out and they had their whole lives to look forward to.

That was one of the things that surprised me. The other was just the kind of lives they led before they went off to war. I don't think any of them were wealthy. They didn't come from wealthy backgrounds. They came from all over the country, you know, from the south from your home state of North Carolina. And, you know, my dad was born in Dallas, but raised in Chicago. So they just, you know, they were just these typical sort of starry eye men who just wanted to serve this country and do something good.

And there was this chance to do this. And, you know, a lot had been written about the air. A lot of things have been written about it. But nobody had ever really delved into their lives.

“That's the angle I chose to take because it was so fascinating to me. It's like, who are these men who disappeared? Who are they?”

And I mean, I found it so powerful to hear from some of these pilots in their own words through their letters to their loved ones.

And, and could you read a letter from John Henry Chavez? He was writing to his mother about his soon to be bride, who he called cookie. Okay. I'm still a very lucky guy. Look at the nice letter I got from her mother. The next time you talk to cookie, be sure to welcome her to the Chavez family. By the way, when are you going to congratulate me?

I'm sure you're happy over my having such a perfect girlfriend. Who writes like that now? No, and that's the other thing is reading those letters. I was like, what have we lost in the fact that people don't send, they don't communicate like that anymore. But from this, like, he's so like, you know, star-eyed and like, you know, and just like, got the perfect girlfriend, which, you know, everybody feels like that at that. You know, that front page, like, how did you feel going through these personal effects? And like, how did you get this letter?

So I got this letter from Chavez's nephew and niece. You know, I got lucky, you know, journalism is a lot about luck, but writing this book was a lot about luck too, because so many of these relatives actually, kept or handed letters were handed down from other relatives to them, and they just, they, to their credit, they kept them. And I got, you know, other letters were just as sort of, um, endearing. Yes, endearing, very heartwarming, very endearing, very real, very from the heart kind of letters, yeah.

And, you know, reading that letter from Chavez, I'm filled with all of this hope and joy. The other part of the book is that it makes it really sad when you learn of the tragedy of his disappearance on a mission in February 1945. Um, the military blamed engine trouble for Chavez's playing going down. But as the book shows, like, there is often, like, just a lack of clarity about what happened when these pilots went missing. Was that just a feature or, like, just the nature of war at that time, were these type of crashes common?

Well, you know, there was a lot going on, because there was a war going on.

“But, but I think that the black pilots were ignored more than others, right?”

You know, when war was over, um, or even during the war when some of these men disappeared. Some of the guys they were with over in Italy, um, which is where they were. That's where they were based. They went, looking for them. They're, they're fellow pilots went, circling for them or looking for them.

And, and the government certainly was aware that they disappeared because they always had to file if somebody went missing.

You had to file a report. But oftentimes, you know, if they went down in an enemy territory, the government said, well, it was, you know, it was too dangerous for us to go and search for them.

But then there's after the war and, you know, sometimes it took two, three, four, five years.

Um, I'm not sure what they helped to find after all that time. And sometimes they didn't search it all.

“I mean, and so do you attribute that lack of urgency to the fact that this was a segregated military at that time?”

And that these were black men and that they were not valued as much at that moment. Oh, I absolutely think that plays a role for sure.

I mean, talking to, um, you know, not only learning about the 27, but also the Tuskegee Airmen pilots who flew over in the 332nd,

fighter group who were still living when I started this book four years ago now, going on five, having conversations with them and meeting with them. The stories they told me about how they were treated was just unimaginable that they did not want you there. Period. They didn't want them flying the planes. They didn't want them there. You don't forget things like that. And you don't forget when people treat you badly. When we come back, Sheryl W. Thompson will tell us about her conversations with the family members of Missing Airmen.

Stay with us. We're back with this Sunday's story. I've been talking with my empire colleague, Sheryl W. Thompson, about her new book for gotten souls, the search for the lost Tuskegee Airmen. Talk to me about the impact on the families because it sounds like, you know, they would get the telegram that their loved ones were MIA and a year later they would be declared dead.

“And how did the families move forward and how did they deal with just the not knowing?”

I don't think, and I think I'm safe and saying that for the families I met with and talked to repeatedly, they never got over it. Right, they never got over. Some of them still have siblings and they're in their 90s now. And so it destroyed their parents. Not only moms but dads as well, who just, you know, there was one father who just didn't want his son. To be in the end, to go off to war, he didn't want him to go. He didn't want him to go because he knew he didn't want to lose him, any, any lost him.

And for the children, right, because some of them had children, the oldest one I found at the time the her dad disappeared was three. And she's now 84. And she has said to me, and I talked to her just at the day because I keep in touch with these families because it's sort of like, you know, when you spend time with these people over years, you just have a relationship, you develop some kind of relationship with them. And she says, you know, I'm still waiting. I'm hoping that one day, you know, somebody will knock on my door and say we found your dad.

What is the government looking like? Did you find any evidence of that? Are they looking? Are these families getting any type of support? So none of the families are with the exception of two that they found in the last, you know, eight years.

No, the families told me they have never heard from the government. The government is just totally ignored them.

Why do you think this hasn't been talked about more? I mean, I feel like we hear not saying that we could ever hear enough about the Tuskegee Airmen, but we hear about the honors, we, you know, the, you know, in the state of the union, they're getting honor at the White House. But why haven't we talked more about those that were lost and their remains were not found. Why, why, why have we not talked about that?

“That's a good question. That's a question you should post to the government and ask them like, what are you guys doing? Why hasn't this come up?”

Because I mean, they were honored, you know, back in, I want to say it was 2007 by the Bush George W. Bush White House when they got the congressional Medal of Honor actually was on my birthday. And so those who were, you know, still around, of course, went to the White House and they were very touched by it and honored by it. And then President Obama in the homes I visited with families. There was some kind of proclamation from President Obama on the walls. And then, you know, that's a question. That's a really good question. Why? What do the families that you talked to? What do they want from the government? Do they want? They obviously they want their loved ones found, but do they want even just an acknowledgement?

The families I got to know, I think, would be happy with someone knocking on their door, picking up the phone saying, you know what? We haven't forgotten about your dad. We haven't forgotten about your brother. We haven't forgotten about your uncle's something, but does have crickets? You know, is probably the most hurtful thing for them, is to just because in their mind it says, nobody cares. Well, what do you think? What do you want the public to learn from this book? Because you've now, you know, set this record and born witness to the lives of these men and put it in black and white. So we can all see, you know, the honor that they served with and lost their lives. Like, what do you want the public to take from this?

Like John Chavez and they had wives and they had children and they had families who loved them. And I don't want people to forget that.

“You know, because we know that the Tuskegee Airman exists, right? We know that.”

But what do we really know about who these men were? They had people who loved them, who cared about them, who never ever forgot them. And now, you know, they have no closure.

And most, you know, of course, all the parents are gone. They never got closure. They never had a body to bury. You know, it was just they were left hanging. The government, you know, at some point kind of left them hanging by not keeping in touch with them.

“Cheryl, thank you so much. Thank you, Aisha, for having me.”

That was MPR investigative correspondent, Cheryl W. Thompson. You can find more of her work at mpr.org. Her new book is Forgotten Souls, The Search for the Lost Tuskegee Airman. This episode of the Sunday Story was produced by Rimmie Svernowski, an edited by Justinian. The engineer was Jimmy Keely, special thanks to Ryan Bank and Ed McNulty, who produced and edited the original interview. The Sunday Story team includes Andrew Mombo, Jenny Schmidt, and our senior supervising producer Leanna Simstrom. Our executive producer is Irene Naguchi.

I'm Aisha Roscoe, up first is back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week until then have a great rest of your weekend.