BURYING THE PAST: After 63 years, remains of Houlton native killed in WWII crash will be laid to rest at Arlington

GORHAM – The remains of a World War II pilot from Maine who was killed when his plane crashed during a test flight in Alaska 63 years ago will be buried Friday at Arlington National Cemetery.

The military used DNA analysis to identify remains found at a remote crash site as those of Army Air Corps 2nd Lt. Harold Hoskin, a 22-year-old Houlton native.

Hoskin’s B-24 bomber went down in the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve on Dec. 21, 1943, when an engine malfunctioned during a cold-weather test of the plane’s propeller systems.

One of the five crew members, 2nd Lt. Leon Crane, survived and made it back to his base months later after wandering in the wilderness and living off food stores from trappers’ cabins. He led searchers to the crash site, where they located the remains of two crewmen but found no trace of Hoskin, who was erroneously believed to have parachuted from the plane.

After several artifacts were uncovered at the crash site three years ago, military investigators returned there and recovered bone fragments. The identification was announced in March after the DNA was found to match that of Hoskin’s younger brother John, a retired minister in Gorham.

Harold Hoskin had dreams of becoming a doctor and was attending Bates College when he learned Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor. He left college and joined the Army a few months later in 1942.

After completing pilot training, Hoskin married his girlfriend, Mary, and the couple were awaiting the birth of their first child at the time of the crash. She was never able to discuss her husband’s death and did not remarry for more than two decades. She died in 2004.

“Any time I ever asked her about it, she would cry,” said Joann Goldstein, 63, of Punta Gorda, Fla., their daughter.

The investigation helped shed light on a chapter of Hoskin family history that was incomplete and seldom talked about after the war. At the urging of family members, Goldstein this summer went through the wartime letters from Hoskin that his wife had boxed up.

When asked what her mother would think of the coming burial ceremony, Goldstein said, “I think she would be honored that he’s being honored.”