Remains Of Soldier Killed In Nazi War Crimes Returned To Bay Area

SEBASTOPOL, CA — The remains of an American soldier killed in a Nazi war crime during World War II have been returned to the San Francisco Bay Area.

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Yuen Hop of Sebastopol was a waist gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress when it was shot down by anti-aircraft fire on Dec. 29, 1944, on a bombing mission to Bingen, Germany, to support the Battle of the Bulge, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

All crew members were able to parachute from the plane before it crashed. Five successfully landed and were taken as prisoners of war by German soldiers. One crew member was found dead by German soldiers in the woods near Oesterich, Germany.

The remaining three crew members, including Hop, were unaccounted-for, and there was no record of them being held as POWs.

In 1946, the American Graves Registration Command, the organization that searched for and recovered fallen Americans in Europe, began investigating several crash sites from downed aircraft of the Bingen air raid. Local German citizens were interviewed, and several accounts were recorded seeing American troops landing by parachutes.

Investigations continued for several years, but by April 1950, the graves registration command exhausted all efforts to recover the three missing men and issued a recommendation they be declared non-recoverable.

"In 2013, however, researchers discovered documents containing information on the three captured airmen, referencing a War Crimes case, indicating he was captured and killed by German SS troops and buried in a local cemetery in the town of Kamp-Bornhofen," the POW/MIA agency said.

Between May 2021 and August 2022, teams from the POW/MIA agency began excavation of a suspected burial site in the Kamp-Bornhofen Cemetery. The team recovered possible bone remains and associated materials.

Those items were transferred to the agency's laboratory for analysis and identification, the agency said. The analysis and the totality of the circumstantial evidence established an association between a portion of the remains and Hop. He was identified on June 18, 2024.

On Friday, Hop's flag-draped casket was met at San Francisco International Airport by his only living sister, 93-year-old Margery Wong of San Francisco, along with her family, the San Francisco Police Department said.

A police motorcade escorted the procession to Duggan's Serra Mortuary in Daly City. A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Feb. 7 at Duggan's, 500 Westlake Avenue. Hop will be laid to rest with full honors at Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno.

His parents, Gin and Chan Hop; his three brothers James Hop, Howe Hop, and Yee Hop (all of whom served in the U.S. military), and two of his sisters, Ho Woo and Doris Wong, all died while he was listed as Missing in Action.

His name is recorded on the Wall of the Missing at Lorraine American Cemetery in Saint-Avold, France. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has now been accounted for, according to the POW/MIA agency.