WWII airman buried 63 years after crash

DETROIT, April 14 (UPI) -- A World War II airman, who disappeared over New Guinea when he was 20, has been laid to rest next to his parents in Detroit.

Joseph Michael King, a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Corps, was buried with military honors Friday in Woodmere Cemetery, The Detroit News reported. The funeral service was held at Holy Cross Hungarian Catholic Church, where King was baptized in 1923.

Mary King Cibor, King's 91-year-old sister, said she had to fight for burial in Michigan. The Army wanted to bury King in Arlington National Cemetery.

"It was the promise I made to my mother and father," Cibor said.

King was a rear gunner on a B-24 Liberator that disappeared in a bad storm as it was returning from a mission to a base in New Guinea in 1943. The wreckage of the bomber was discovered in 2001 and King's remains identified a year later.

King's parents had hoped for years that his body would be found. In 1975, they put a memorial marker in the family plot.