A nation’s duty

Argentina should heed families’ wishes on remains

It took Argentina a year to find a submarine that disappeared with 44 crew members aboard, and now the government has balked at raising it so that remains can be returned to still-grieving family members.

The judge overseeing the investigation into the San Juan’s tragic end said she’ll order the sub lifted from the Atlantic floor only if that would help to answer questions about what happened to it.

That isn’t right. The 43 men and one woman on the

San Juan gave their lives for their country, and their remains should be returned to loved ones if that’s what the families choose. Experts say a salvage operation is feasible, and the decision shouldn’t turn on cost even though Argentina is struggling financially.

The San Juan was on routine patrol off the Argentinian coast on Nov. 15, 2017, when it reported trouble with its batteries and was ordered to return to base. It never was heard from again. A nuclear watchdog group later reported that one of its listening stations had detected an underwater explosion in the sub’s vicinity, and the Argentinian government concluded that the San Juan imploded.

Finding it proved no easy task. After a multinational search failed to identify the sub’s resting place, Argentina last month brought in Ocean Infinity, the seabed exploration company headquartered in London and Houston, Texas, that also took part in the unsuccessful search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. On Nov. 17, a year and two days after the sub disappeared, Ocean Infinity found the San Juan in about 3,000 feet of water.

Family members who pushed for the government to hire Ocean Infinity now say they’ll fight to have the sub lifted from the ocean. The operation would cost at least $100 million by one estimate and, given the possibility that not all of the sailors might be identified, raising the sub could bring the families more pain.

Yet this should be the families’ choice. Today’s identification techniques are highly sophisticated and getting better all of the time. As a barometer of what is scientifically possible and of how powerful perseverance can be, the families might consider the work of the New York City medical examiner’s office, which has spent 17 years trying to identify remains of the 2,753 people killed during the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

So far, it has identified remains from 1,642 victims. The most recent identification, of remains belonging to 26-year-old securities analyst Scott Michael Johnson, came in July. New York City promised never to quit trying to identify remains, and it never has.

Argentina owes the same commitment to the families of the San Juan’s crew. The government should meet with the family members, get a consensus on how they want to proceed and spare no resource carrying out their will.