Maj Zau Seng of the armed wing of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) knows firsthand that territory controlled by his group still holds the remains of US military personnel who died in northern Burma during the Second World War.

Over tea at his office in the KIO-controlled enclave of Mai Ja Yang, Zau Seng, a local commander for the area, proudly displays the US military identification tag for a Cleveland Hargrove. The tag numbered 342711 T44 0 was discovered in 2006 by local villagers at a World War II-era crash site in a remote mountainous section of western Kachin State near the border with India, an area semi-controlled by the KIO.