‘We’re going down’ – killer co-pilot’s dreams
Searching for thousands of bodies in Palau’s wartime caves
THE co-pilot who investigators believe crashed a passenger jet into the French Alps worried ‘‘health problems’’ would dash his dreams and vowed one day to do something to ‘‘change the whole system’’, an ex-girlfriend says.
The 26-year-old, identified only as Maria W, recalled in an interview with the Bild daily newspaper how Andreas Lubitz told her: ‘‘One day I’m going to do something that will change the whole system, and everyone will know my name and remember.’’
‘‘I never knew what he meant by that but now it makes sense,’’ it quoted the ‘‘shocked’’ flight attendant ON A remote coral island in the tiny Pacific nation of Palau, officials have been inching through foliage littered with explosives to open a network of sealed caves and search for bodies believed to have lain inside since World War II.
The grim and painstaking task, undertaken by a team of local and Japanese archaeologists and munitions experts, is aimed at finding the remains of Japanese soldiers trapped inside by United States forces during one of the toughest battles of the war.
The Japanese used the caves, connected via tunnels and narrow passageways, as a base for their defence of Peleliu, a narrow island only six miles long. More than 10,000 Japanese soldiers died, but the bodies of 2600 were never found.
Now Palau has agreed to open about 200 remaining caves to try and locate the remains ahead of a visit early next month by Japan’s Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko.
The macabre task is risky and involves clearing a way into the caves through thick forest littered with unexploded ordnance.
A team of experts took five days last week to enter just one cave with a 7ft opening.
Archaeologists found a set of bones that are believed to be human and will be taken back to Japan for testing.
‘‘They found some bones while they were clearing the entrance of the cave,’’ Bernadette Carreon, a local journalist, said to ABC Radio. ‘‘They did not use heavy equipment because they have to make it clear of heavy ordnance. When it’s clear, the archaeologists can go in and start bone collection.’’
The attempt to find the bodies has been welcomed in Japan as part of an effort to bring closure to a brutal chapter of the war, one that is still regarded as one of the harshest conflicts in the history of the marines.
Unlike previous battles in the Pacific, the Japanese did not focus their defence on using suicide charges to prevent the United States from establishing a beachhead.
Instead, the Japanese forces largely allowed the marines to land but staged their defence from inside the caves.
The Japanese, who had occupied Palau for about 30 years, had spent decades using dynamite and axes to enlarge existing caves on Peleliu and blast out new ones. The caves and their entrances were then heavily camouflaged.
The US forces expected the battle in September 1944 to last only four or five days.
‘‘It will be a hard-fought quickie,’’ predicted William Rupertus, the US marine commander. It took more than 10 weeks.
as Bloody Peleliu.
More than 1600 US soldiers were killed during the battle, which ended with the marines blowing up many of the caves, leaving thousands of the enemy trapped inside. Shortly before the Americans finally seized the small island in late November, Col Kunio Nakagawa, the Japanese commander, atoned for his defeat by committing ritual suicide. as saying.
The black box voice recorder indicates that Lubitz, 27, locked the captain out of the cockpit of the Germanwings jet and deliberately flew Flight 4U 9525 into a mountainside.
The more senior pilot tried desperately to reopen the door during its eight-minute descent, French officials say. All 150 people aboard were killed.
As investigators race to build a picture of Lubitz and any possible motives, new media reports emerged saying he had suffered from vision problems, adding to earlier reports he was severely depressed.
German prosecutors believe he hid an illness from his airline but
About 35 Japanese soldiers remained hiding in the caves until April 1947, more than 18 months after the war officially ended. They were the last troops to surrender.
Keiji Nagai, 93, and Kiyokazu Tsuchida, 95, two of the 35 soldiers who surrendered in 1947, met the Japanese emperor and empress earlier this month to provide an have not specified the ailment.
He had apparently been written off as sick on the day the Airbus crashed on its route from Barcelona to Duesseldorf.
Bild , which showed a photo of the ex-girlfriend from behind to conceal her face, said she had flown with Lubitz on European flights for five months last year and that he had had another girlfriend since her.
She said he could be ‘‘sweet’’ and would give her flowers but got agitated talking about work conditions, such as pay or the pressure of the job, and was plagued by nightmares.
‘‘At night he woke up and screamed ‘We’re going down’,’’ the account of the hand-to-hand combat they experienced during the battle. The empress quietly told Nagai: ‘‘You went through a lot.’’
Authorities began collecting the remains at various locations around the island in 1953, but Japanese authorities say 2600 soldiers have yet to be found. The bodies are believed to be holed up inside about 200 caves that were former girlfriend recalled.
If Lubitz did deliberately crash the plane, it was ‘‘because he understood that because of his health problems, his big dream of a job at Lufthansa, of a job as captain and as a long-haul pilot, was practically impossible’’, she told Bild .
She split up with him because it became ‘‘increasingly clear that he had problems’’, she said.
German police found a number ‘‘of medicines for the treatment of psychological illness’’ during a search at his Duesseldorf home, weekly newspaper Welt am Sonntag said, quoting an unnamed high-ranking investigator as saying Lubitz had been deemed dangerous and left sealed to prevent public access. About 450 Japanese soldiers survived the battle and later helped to direct authorities to the site of graves.
The entire island has become something of a monument to the battle, with unexploded bombs a constant threat to residents and tourists. Following the war, Japan created a peace park, which included a Shinto shrine with the inscription ‘‘To all countries’ unknown soldiers’’.
Officials in Palau have worked closely with Japan to try and recover the remaining bodies and return them to the families of the soldiers. Some representatives of these families have assisted with the search.
Sachio Kageyama, from a group representing families and fellow soldiers of those who fought on the island, told The Japan Times : ‘‘I hope the forthcoming visit by the emperor will pave the way for [further] collection of remains.’’
Palau, a remote cluster of islands east of the Philippines, with a population of about 21,000, treated by several and psychiatrists.
Sunday’s Bild weekly and the New York Times, which cited two officials with knowledge of the investigation, said Lubitz had sought treatment for problems with his sight.
Germanwings pilot Frank Woiton was quoted in Saturday’s edition of Bild as saying he had flown with Lubitz, who had spoken about his ambitions to become a captain and fly longdistance routes.
He said he handled the plane well and ‘‘therefore I also left him alone in the cockpit to go to the toilet’’, he told the newspaper.
French police investigator
neurologists was the scene of heavy fighting during the war. The fierce battle at Peleliu was over an airfield now deemed of questionable strategic value by most historians.
The search for the bodies has also focused on a long-lost mass grave on the western side of the island, close to where the current cave search is being conducted.
US military documents indicating the cemetery’s location were found two years ago at a naval museum in California. The documents included a map created in January 1945 that says ‘‘Japanese cemetery’’ and points to the centre of the island. A separate report from a construction battalion says that logs were placed on the site to prevent people disturbing the graves. US officials reportedly told Palau in 1994 that a mass grave was located near Nakagawa’s grave.
US experts have also been searching Palau’s coral reefs, lagoons and islands for planes that were lost in the conflict. Last year, underwater robots were used to find two warplanes on the ocean floor. Jean-Pierre Michel, who was in Duesseldorf at the weekend, said Lubitz’s personality was a ‘‘serious lead’’ in the inquiry but not the only one.
The investigation had so far not turned up a ‘‘particular element’’ in the co-pilot’s life which could explain his alleged action in the ill-fated Airbus plane, he said.
German prosecutors revealed on Friday that searches of Lubitz’s homes netted ‘‘medical documents that suggest an existing illness and appropriate medical treatment’’, including ‘‘torn-up and current sick leave notes, among them one covering the day of the crash’’.