News Analysis India

Tag: World War II

  • Wish ‘Oppenheimer’ showed ‘what happened to the Japanese people’, says Spike Lee

    By PTI

    WASHINGTON DC: Calling “Oppenheimer” a great film, veteran filmmaker Spike Lee said it would have been better if its director Christopher Nolan had showed the impact of the nuclear bombs on the Japanese people during World War II.

    Fronted by Cillian Murphy, “Oppenheimer” is a 180-minute-long sprawling biographical drama on the titular American theoretical physicist, which was released in theatres on July 21.

    It has emerged as one of the biggest grossing films of the year.

    In an interview with The Washington Post, Lee said what he said about the film was “not criticism”, but a comment.

    “Chris Nolan with ‘Oppenheimer’, he’s a massive filmmaker. Great film, and this is not a criticism. It’s a comment. If (‘Oppenheimer’) is three hours, I would like to add some more minutes about what happened to the Japanese people. People got vaporized. Many years later, people are radioactive. It’s not like he didn’t have power. He tells studios what to do. I would have loved to have the end of the film maybe show what it did, dropping those two nuclear bombs on Japan,” the Oscar winner told the publication.

    Lee also shared he showed Nolan’s World War II epic “Dunkirk” in his New York University film class.

    “Understand, this is all love. And I bet (Nolan) could tell me some things he would change about ‘Do the Right Thing’ and ‘Malcolm X’,” he added.

    In the same interview, the director also praised Martin Scorsese for his latest directorial venture “Killers of the Flower Moon”.

    “That’s my guy. It’s a great film,” he said.

    Lee, also an Academy member, said the film’s breakout star Lily Gladstone could become the first Native American actress to win a lead actress Oscar.

    “Lily Gladstone, she’s winning an Oscar. She’s got my vote,” he added.

    READ HERE:

    People filling theatres to see ‘Oppenheimer’, ‘Barbie’ victory for cinema: Francis Ford Coppola 

    ‘Oppenheimer’ movie review: Nolan’s bleak biopic is measured and masterful

    WASHINGTON DC: Calling “Oppenheimer” a great film, veteran filmmaker Spike Lee said it would have been better if its director Christopher Nolan had showed the impact of the nuclear bombs on the Japanese people during World War II.

    Fronted by Cillian Murphy, “Oppenheimer” is a 180-minute-long sprawling biographical drama on the titular American theoretical physicist, which was released in theatres on July 21.

    It has emerged as one of the biggest grossing films of the year.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); });

    In an interview with The Washington Post, Lee said what he said about the film was “not criticism”, but a comment.

    “Chris Nolan with ‘Oppenheimer’, he’s a massive filmmaker. Great film, and this is not a criticism. It’s a comment. If (‘Oppenheimer’) is three hours, I would like to add some more minutes about what happened to the Japanese people. People got vaporized. Many years later, people are radioactive. It’s not like he didn’t have power. He tells studios what to do. I would have loved to have the end of the film maybe show what it did, dropping those two nuclear bombs on Japan,” the Oscar winner told the publication.

    Lee also shared he showed Nolan’s World War II epic “Dunkirk” in his New York University film class.

    “Understand, this is all love. And I bet (Nolan) could tell me some things he would change about ‘Do the Right Thing’ and ‘Malcolm X’,” he added.

    In the same interview, the director also praised Martin Scorsese for his latest directorial venture “Killers of the Flower Moon”.

    “That’s my guy. It’s a great film,” he said.

    Lee, also an Academy member, said the film’s breakout star Lily Gladstone could become the first Native American actress to win a lead actress Oscar.

    “Lily Gladstone, she’s winning an Oscar. She’s got my vote,” he added.

    READ HERE:

    People filling theatres to see ‘Oppenheimer’, ‘Barbie’ victory for cinema: Francis Ford Coppola 

    ‘Oppenheimer’ movie review: Nolan’s bleak biopic is measured and masterful

  • Steve McQueen’s marathon documentary divides Cannes

    By AFP

    CANNES: Eyelids grew heavy and bums numb on Thursday at a four-and-a-half-hour screening of Steve McQueen’s documentary on Amsterdam during World War II, which Cannes critics either adored or suffered through.

    The director of Oscar-winning ‘Twelve Years a Slave,’ tells the story of Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, a city where he now lives without a single shot of archival footage.

    Instead, he films people in their homes and scenes around the city, while a narrator recounts, without emotion, the horrors that took place in that spot when the Netherlands suffered one of the highest rates of Jewish deaths in Europe.

    Much of the documentary, ‘Occupied City’, was filmed during the Covid lockdown, and images of boarded-up stores, an announcement of a curfew, and protests, at times play as a backdrop to the World War II narration.

    The disconnect between the past and the present is purposeful.

    “It’s about living with ghosts and about the past and the present sort of merging,” McQueen told Variety magazine.

    However, the lengthy museum-installation-style documentary had several audience members nodding off. More than two dozen left before the 15-minute intermission, with others not returning for the second half.

    Some critics gushed over the monumental project and its novel approach, with Deadline calling it one of the “great WWII-themed films,” while others slammed it as “numbing.”

    “The film is a trial to sit through, and you feel that from almost the opening moments,” said Variety.

    “It’s more like listening to 150 encyclopedia entries in a row. Who did McQueen think he was making this movie for? If it plays in theatres, it seems all but designed to provoke walk-outs.”

    “Occupied City” is inspired by a book written by McQueen’s historian partner Bianca Stigter:  “Atlas of an Occupied City (Amsterdam 1940-1945).”

    McQueen shot 36 hours of film for the project over three years.

    “It wasn’t a case of wanting to do something long,” McQueen said in an interview with IndieWire. “It was a case of wanting to do something right.”

    “As much as it is about the past, this film is extremely about the present,” McQueen said.

    “Unfortunately, we never seem to learn from the past. Things sort of overtake us,” he said, referring to the rise of the far-right in modern times.

    CANNES: Eyelids grew heavy and bums numb on Thursday at a four-and-a-half-hour screening of Steve McQueen’s documentary on Amsterdam during World War II, which Cannes critics either adored or suffered through.

    The director of Oscar-winning ‘Twelve Years a Slave,’ tells the story of Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, a city where he now lives without a single shot of archival footage.

    Instead, he films people in their homes and scenes around the city, while a narrator recounts, without emotion, the horrors that took place in that spot when the Netherlands suffered one of the highest rates of Jewish deaths in Europe.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); });

    Much of the documentary, ‘Occupied City’, was filmed during the Covid lockdown, and images of boarded-up stores, an announcement of a curfew, and protests, at times play as a backdrop to the World War II narration.

    The disconnect between the past and the present is purposeful.

    “It’s about living with ghosts and about the past and the present sort of merging,” McQueen told Variety magazine.

    However, the lengthy museum-installation-style documentary had several audience members nodding off. More than two dozen left before the 15-minute intermission, with others not returning for the second half.

    Some critics gushed over the monumental project and its novel approach, with Deadline calling it one of the “great WWII-themed films,” while others slammed it as “numbing.”

    “The film is a trial to sit through, and you feel that from almost the opening moments,” said Variety.

    “It’s more like listening to 150 encyclopedia entries in a row. Who did McQueen think he was making this movie for? If it plays in theatres, it seems all but designed to provoke walk-outs.”

    “Occupied City” is inspired by a book written by McQueen’s historian partner Bianca Stigter:  “Atlas of an Occupied City (Amsterdam 1940-1945).”

    McQueen shot 36 hours of film for the project over three years.

    “It wasn’t a case of wanting to do something long,” McQueen said in an interview with IndieWire. “It was a case of wanting to do something right.”

    “As much as it is about the past, this film is extremely about the present,” McQueen said.

    “Unfortunately, we never seem to learn from the past. Things sort of overtake us,” he said, referring to the rise of the far-right in modern times.

  • Revenge of the marginalised

    Express News Service

    On the face of it there seems little in common between Bong Joon-ho’s much-celebrated Parasite (2019) and Houman Seyyedi’s World War III (2022), but the fairytale-like chance of a lifetime offered to Seyyedi’s protagonist, the homeless labourer Shakib (Mohsen Tanabandeh), to become a “somebody” from a “nobody” has uncanny parallels with the mind-boggling infiltration, appropriation and occupation of the wealthy Park home by the poor Kim family in the former.

    Some early scenes in it, of labourers waiting to be picked up in trucks to be ferried to the construction sites, reminded me of a similar working-class routine portrayed in M. Gani’s Hindi film Matto Ki Saikil (2022). This universality defines World War III.

    Like Parasite it invokes endemic inequities through architectural verticality. Like the semi-basements and bunkers in Korea, the dispossessed are confined under the earth, the Netherworld of sorts in the Iranian film. Both are marked by a gradual shift in tone—from a light-heartedness in Parasite and the fable-like feel in World War III, there’s a rushing headlong into a horrific climax that underlines a dystopic reality where, even in the face of promises of progress, the social divides between the haves and have-nots continue to remain entrenched, perennially depriving the latter of their rightful due. Social mobility is the stuff of dreams, not reality.

    Having lost his wife and son in an earthquake, Shakib has been in a steady relationship (a one-woman man as he calls himself) with a deaf and mute prostitute Ladan (Mahsa Hejazi) much to the disapproval of his friends. The turnaround in fortunes comes with a construction job on the set of a film about atrocities committed by Hitler during World War II. It makes Shakib and Ladan dream of a comfortable life together.

    But will they be able to seize it? The fact is that life for the poor and disenfranchised is a perennial Holocaust, of deceits, deceptions and betrayals. Their living conditions are like being in concentration camps. The poor of today don’t have to “get to know” the horrors of Nazism when they are living it.Seyyedi’s film uses the device of film-within-a-film to comment on society at large, especially deploying to great effect the comic-ironic element of the disempowered playacting the powerful oppressor. 

    It ties in with Seyyedi’s evocation of political theorist and historian Hannah Arendt in his Director’s Statement. “Arendt once said that in dictatorships, everything goes well, up until 15 minutes before the total collapse. Societies ruled by such totalitarian regimes are the most effective creators of anarchists,” he writes. His film is an illustration of precisely this tyranny and oppression, it is an urgent warning for the present and the future by harking back to the past.

    However, not just political, there are several flashpoints between the empowered and the marginalised—social, economic, aesthetic, and even cinematic—leading to their boundless rage, rebellion, revenge and bottomless tragedy. A director can be a dictator and a film set could be a site of physical labour pitted against intellectual, and artistic pursuits. There is hierarchy and powerplay in filmmaking as well.

    “Everyone is always bullying everyone else,” states an extra in the film. Shakib complains of no one listening to him, and that it’s easier to beat him up than lend him an ear. “I was a nobody. I am a nobody still,” he says, despite his starring role. But is it worth becoming somebody who is compromised and heartless? That forms the core moral debate of the film.

    World War III won the best film and best actor awards in the Orizzonti section of the Venice Film Festival 2022 and was the official submission of Iran for the Best International Film Oscar this year. It plays on March 26 at the Capital’s India Habitat Centre as part of the Habitat International Film Festival. Well worth a watch.

    On the face of it there seems little in common between Bong Joon-ho’s much-celebrated Parasite (2019) and Houman Seyyedi’s World War III (2022), but the fairytale-like chance of a lifetime offered to Seyyedi’s protagonist, the homeless labourer Shakib (Mohsen Tanabandeh), to become a “somebody” from a “nobody” has uncanny parallels with the mind-boggling infiltration, appropriation and occupation of the wealthy Park home by the poor Kim family in the former.

    Some early scenes in it, of labourers waiting to be picked up in trucks to be ferried to the construction sites, reminded me of a similar working-class routine portrayed in M. Gani’s Hindi film Matto Ki Saikil (2022). This universality defines World War III.

    Like Parasite it invokes endemic inequities through architectural verticality. Like the semi-basements and bunkers in Korea, the dispossessed are confined under the earth, the Netherworld of sorts in the Iranian film. Both are marked by a gradual shift in tone—from a light-heartedness in Parasite and the fable-like feel in World War III, there’s a rushing headlong into a horrific climax that underlines a dystopic reality where, even in the face of promises of progress, the social divides between the haves and have-nots continue to remain entrenched, perennially depriving the latter of their rightful due. Social mobility is the stuff of dreams, not reality.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2’); });

    Having lost his wife and son in an earthquake, Shakib has been in a steady relationship (a one-woman man as he calls himself) with a deaf and mute prostitute Ladan (Mahsa Hejazi) much to the disapproval of his friends. The turnaround in fortunes comes with a construction job on the set of a film about atrocities committed by Hitler during World War II. It makes Shakib and Ladan dream of a comfortable life together.

    But will they be able to seize it? The fact is that life for the poor and disenfranchised is a perennial Holocaust, of deceits, deceptions and betrayals. Their living conditions are like being in concentration camps. The poor of today don’t have to “get to know” the horrors of Nazism when they are living it.
    Seyyedi’s film uses the device of film-within-a-film to comment on society at large, especially deploying to great effect the comic-ironic element of the disempowered playacting the powerful oppressor. 

    It ties in with Seyyedi’s evocation of political theorist and historian Hannah Arendt in his Director’s Statement. “Arendt once said that in dictatorships, everything goes well, up until 15 minutes before the total collapse. Societies ruled by such totalitarian regimes are the most effective creators of anarchists,” he writes. His film is an illustration of precisely this tyranny and oppression, it is an urgent warning for the present and the future by harking back to the past.

    However, not just political, there are several flashpoints between the empowered and the marginalised—social, economic, aesthetic, and even cinematic—leading to their boundless rage, rebellion, revenge and bottomless tragedy. A director can be a dictator and a film set could be a site of physical labour pitted against intellectual, and artistic pursuits. There is hierarchy and powerplay in filmmaking as well.

    “Everyone is always bullying everyone else,” states an extra in the film. Shakib complains of no one listening to him, and that it’s easier to beat him up than lend him an ear. “I was a nobody. I am a nobody still,” he says, despite his starring role. But is it worth becoming somebody who is compromised and heartless? That forms the core moral debate of the film.

    World War III won the best film and best actor awards in the Orizzonti section of the Venice Film Festival 2022 and was the official submission of Iran for the Best International Film Oscar this year. It plays on March 26 at the Capital’s India Habitat Centre as part of the Habitat International Film Festival. Well worth a watch.

  • Freedom over time

    Express News Service

    In Sebastian Meise’s Great Freedom-streaming on MUBI-Franz Rogowski plays Hans Hoffman, imprisoned for being gay under Paragraph 175 in post-World War II Germany. The concept of time folds over itself in Great Freedom, we see Hans in prison in 1945, 1949 and 1969. The temporal granularity of the film exposes the conflict beneath the smoothness of the visuals and its celebration of spooned bodies.

    The driving force of the film is Hans’s fearlessness, routinely locked up for his deviant-under-the-law behaviour and just as often put under solitary confinement within the prison for his restless nature. Great Freedom also traces the arc of Hans’s relationship with Viktor (Georg Friedrich), his first cellmate and homophobe, and another constant in prison whenever Hans finds his way into it.

    Details in the film are out of our grasp for extended sequences. We get tiny information from 1949 to connect to events in 1969. We get 8mm footage of a rare joyous phase in Hans’s life to connect it to his younger version in prison. A tattoo is defaced and shines anew two decades later only for the film to insert a scene from the intervening years when its makeover is completed. 

    Our haziness about Hans’s times in prison is shared by Viktor’s crisscrossing shallowness towards him, time heals, and time turns him soft, our understanding of the film originates from Viktor’s linear growth that is at odds with the film’s non-linear affectations. Therefore, their friendship, also a mutually beneficial relationship is also linear despite the film’s trajectory.

    Rogowski has constructed a career out of playing arresting, uneasy men with tragic pasts and future, specially in films of Christian Petzold. He plays one such character here, acting not just with his face but with his whole body, his unknowing walk on prison floors gradually gaining familiarity over the years and finding ways to love in prison and ever ready to pay the price for it both inside and outside. It’s a fascinating way to measure the passage of time and the growth of a character-during one term Hans uses pages from Bible to send coded messages and in another he uses them to roll his cigarettes. 

    The sounds of prison and the film’s agony becomes relatable to the level that we share Hans’s lack of enthusiasm in Neil Armstrong’s first steps on moon and his quiet excitement when he learns that Paragraph 175 has been abolished. 

    Great Freedom paints a picture of how someone can become a prisoner of their circumstances, which is harder to bust out of compared to a maximum-security prison. A detail painted tragically but too beautifully by the ending. An out-of-tune saxophone does not help.

  • Tony Goldwyn latest to join cast of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer

    By Express News Service

    Tony Goldwyn (of Scandal-fame) has joined the ever-growing cast of Christopher Nolan’s upcoming World War II film Oppenheimer.

    Already billed as one of the biggest multi-starrers, the biopic on J Robert Oppenheimer, one of the fathers of the atom bomb, stars Cillian Murphy as the titular physicist. The film is an adaptation of Martin Sherwin and Kai Bird’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

    The actor joins the previously announced cast including Murphy, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Rami Malek, Benny Safdie, Josh Hartnett, Dane DeHaan, Jack Quaid, Matthew Modine, Dylan Arnold, David Krumholtz, Alden Ehrenreich, Michael Angarano, Louise Lombard, Jason Clarke, David Dastmalchian, Guy Burnet, Josh Peck, Danny Deferrari, Gustaf Skarsgard, and Alex Wolff. Goldwyn’s role in the film remains unknown at the moment. 

    Nolan will write and direct Oppenheimer with Emma Thomas and Charles Rovan co-producing it. The film, backed by Universal Pictures, is expected to hit the screens on July 21, 2023. Notably, Goldwyn can be seen portraying tennis coach Paul Cohen in King Richard, which is set to release in Indian theatres later this week.

  • Ruffalo, Laurie join cast of World War II drama ‘All the Light We Cannot See’

    By IANS

    Mark Ruffalo and Hugh Laurie have joined the cast of Netflix’s ‘All the Light We Cannot See’ limited series based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Anthony Doerr.

    Ruffalo and Laurie, according to ‘Variety’, will star in the bestselling novel’s four-part TV adaptation alongside newcomer Aria Mia Loberti, a visually impaired actress who was previously announced as playing the leading role of Marie-Laure, the blind teenager at the heart of the story.

    In ‘All the Light We Cannot See’, Marie-Laure’s path collides with Werner, a German soldier, as they both try to survive the devastation of World War II in occupied France.

    Ruffalo will play Marie-Laure’s father, Daniel LeBlanc, the principal locksmith at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. Caring and clever, he’s determined to give his blind daughter as much independence as he can while also protecting her — and the secret gem they carry — from Nazi occupation.

    Laurie has been cast as Etienne LeBlanc, an eccentric and reclusive World War I hero suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A nervous shut-in, LeBlanc records clandestine radio broadcasts as part of the French Resistance.

    The Netflix series is written by Steven Knight (‘Peaky Blinders’) and directed by Shawn Levy (‘Stranger Things’, ‘Free Guy’ and ‘Shadow and Bone’). The novel on which the series is based was on the ‘New York Times’ Bestseller list for 200 weeks.

  • Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie join cast of World War II drama ‘All the Light We Cannot See’

    By IANS

    Mark Ruffalo and Hugh Laurie have joined the cast of Netflix’s ‘All the Light We Cannot See’ limited series based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Anthony Doerr.

    Ruffalo and Laurie, according to ‘Variety’, will star in the bestselling novel’s four-part TV adaptation alongside newcomer Aria Mia Loberti, a visually impaired actress who was previously announced as playing the leading role of Marie-Laure, the blind teenager at the heart of the story.

    In ‘All the Light We Cannot See’, Marie-Laure’s path collides with Werner, a German soldier, as they both try to survive the devastation of World War II in occupied France.

    Ruffalo will play Marie-Laure’s father, Daniel LeBlanc, the principal locksmith at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. Caring and clever, he’s determined to give his blind daughter as much independence as he can while also protecting her — and the secret gem they carry — from Nazi occupation.

    Laurie has been cast as Etienne LeBlanc, an eccentric and reclusive World War I hero suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A nervous shut-in, LeBlanc records clandestine radio broadcasts as part of the French Resistance.

    The Netflix series is written by Steven Knight (‘Peaky Blinders’) and directed by Shawn Levy (‘Stranger Things’, ‘Free Guy’ and ‘Shadow and Bone’). The novel on which the series is based was on the ‘New York Times’ Bestseller list for 200 weeks.

  • Uttarakhand government increases pension given to World War II soldiers, widows

    By PTI

    DEHRADUN: Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on Monday increased the pension given to veterans of World War II and wives of the soldiers who died during the war from Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,000. Making the announcement on Kargil Vijay Diwas, Dhami said 800 families in the state will get the benefits of it.

    He said that financial assistance of Rs 50,000 will be given to candidates who pass NDA and CDS written tests to help them prepare for the viva. However, it will be given on the basis of the economic condition of the families of such candidates, the chief minister said.

    A hostel meant for the children of defence personnel pursuing studies will be built in Haldwani and ceremonies held in both Garhwal and Kumaon regions to honour “vir naris” and soldiers conferred with bravery awards.

    Earlier, Dhami laid a wreath on Shaheed Smarak (martyrs memorial) at Gandhi Park to remember the soldiers who lost their lives in the 1999 Kargil War. “Battling odds, Indian soldiers chased infiltrators beyond the frontiers during the Kargil war. The country will always remember the sacrifices of our brave soldiers,” Dhami said.

    He also visited Kargil martyr Naik Devendra Singh Rawat’s residence in Kaulagarh area and garlanded his picture.

  • ‘Peaky Blinders’ actor Paul Anderson to star in WWII action movie ‘Immortal’

    By Express News Service
    Actor Paul Anderson, well-known for starring as Arthur Shelby in Peaky Blinders, has been roped in to star in the upcoming WWII action movie Immortal.

    Finnish filmmaker Jalmari Helander (Rare Exports, Big Game), will direct the feature, which tells the story of an ex-soldier named Aatami (Jorma Tommila), who comes across gold in the deep forests of Lapland.

    However, as he tries to bring the loot to the city, a group of Nazi soldiers, lead by a brutal SS officer (Paul Anderson) interfere, and this leads to a battle for the gold.

    Petri Jokiranta is also producing Immortal through Subzero Film Entertainment, with Mike Goodridge, Gregory Ouanhon and Antonio Salas serving as executive producers. Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions holds world rights outside Nordic, while Nordisk Film has taken Nordic rights. Anderson is also known for The Revenant, Hostiles, and ’71. 

  • US Dept of Defense joins NFSU in search of 400 personnel missing since WW II

    By PTI
    AHMEDABAD: The Department of Defense of the USA has intensified efforts to find and recover the remains of its over 400 personnel who had gone missing in India during World War II by joining hands with Gandhinagar- based National Forensic Sciences University (NFSU).

    Scientific experts at the NFSU will help the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Agency (DPAA), a part of the Department of Defense (DoD) of the USA, to recover and identify these missing personnel to bring closure to their families.

    “The mission of DoD agency- Defense Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Agency (DPAA) is to provide the fullest possible accounting for the missing personnel to their families and their nation,” DPAA mission project manager at NFSU, Dr Gargi Jani, has said.

    She said the Agency’s teams locate, identify, and repatriate the remains of the unaccounted-for service members from America’s past conflicts including World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War and Iraq and Persian Gulf Wars.

    “There are over 81,800 Department of Defense personnel of the US who are still unaccounted for from the Vietnam War, the Korean War, the Cold War, and the World War II, and over 400 are missing in India,” she said in a statement.

    Jani said the NFSU will scientifically and logistically assist the DPAA in their mission.

    “Partnering with DPAA in their noble mission is an honour, NFSU-DPAA will leverage the joint efforts in India to provide with fullest possible accounting to families of the missing personals,” Jani stated.

    The DAPP recently facilitated the last rites of US citizen Justin G Mills (25) who had died in World War II in 1943.

    “Marine Corps Reserve 1st Lt. Justin G.Mills of Galveston, Texas, killed during World War II, was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery May 26, 2021. In November 1943, Mills was killed on the small island of Betio in the Tarawa Atoll of the Gilbert Islands, in an attempt to secure the island in the fight with Japanese forces.

    “His remains were reportedly buried in the Central Division Cemetery, and later to the Lone Palm Cemetery on Betio Island. Mills was recovered in 2014 and accounted for in 2019. Mills” niece and nephew were on hand to finally welcome their uncle home and lay him to rest,” as per the DAPP website.

    The Gilbert Islands after its independence from the British are now called the Republic of Kiribati and it is an independent island nation in the central Pacific Ocean.

    “We are privileged and enthusiastic to enter into this formal partnership with India”s National Forensic Science University. Their renowned expertise and capabilities will advance our efforts to find and recover the remains of Americans missing from World War II in India,” Kelly McKeague, DPAA Director was quoted as saying in a statement by the DAPP.

    McKeague highlighted the importance of the support of another nation in this endeavour.

    “The DPAA teams are currently in Cambodia and the Philippines (to find remains of missing soldiers), and a large team left Honolulu Feb. 20 for a 60-day mission in Vietnam,” the statement said.

    The teams are following health and safety guidelines, and in doing so, these countries are willing to allow the DPAA back to continue their mission, it said.

    The DPAA has also established a three-way partnership with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) and the NSFU with the virtual signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) dated May 27, to develop academic exchanges and cooperation in teaching and research.

    With this MoU, the NFSU is hopeful to develop academic exchanges and cooperation in teaching and research in the areas of forensic anthropology, forensic archaeology and forensic odontology activities, it said.

    NFSU Vice-Chancellor Dr J M Vyas said the partnership with the DPAA will enable the scientific exchange in the areas of forensic anthropology and odontology and develop best practices for human identification.

    “The NFSU has always taken a lead to promote forensics in a criminal investigation. This kind of partnership will create unique research opportunities and student exchange also,” he said in a statement.

    The NFSU was recently given the status of an Institution of National Importance and is the world’s first and only university dedicated to Forensic and allied sciences.