[How About This Book] People Recovering Remains Amid Disasters

[Asia Economy Reporter Seomideum] On April 14, 1912, a giant passenger ship carrying over 2,200 people sank. The ship's name was the Titanic. More than 1,500 people, including the captain, lost their lives. Five days after the accident, a recovery ship arrived at the site, but there were too many bodies to recover. Ultimately, the recovery ship's captain decided to recover only the remains of first- and second-class passengers, while those in third-class cabins were buried at sea. Of the 306 bodies recovered, 106 were returned to the Atlantic Ocean.

Among the bodies recovered at the time was a two-year-old boy. His identity was unknown. He was buried in a cemetery in Newfoundland, and the tombstone bore the name "Our Baby." The baby regained his name a century later, in 2008. A descendant of a police officer who had kept the baby’s shoes recovered in 1912 (which were originally supposed to be burned) donated the belongings to a museum in 2008, leading to a DNA investigation that finally identified him as Sidney Leslie Goodwin.

Sidney was fortunate to regain his name, but many others still remain unidentified. Recent disasters are no exception. Among the approximately 3,000 victims of the 2001 9/11 attacks, many bodies have yet to be identified. The accurate way to put it is that families have not been able to confirm identities due to limitations in DNA testing technology.

Generally, bodies are identified by finding physical characteristics in fingerprints, dental records, and medical records. Even when bodies are severely damaged, sensors can be inserted into the mouth to confirm unique dental features, or if the skin is torn or decomposed, processes such as rehydration (restoring moisture to return the body to its original state) and piecing together fragments are used to identify the deceased. If these methods fail, DNA testing is used as a last resort, but limitations still exist.

When mass casualties occur, as in the 9/11 attacks, the situation becomes even more difficult. There are so many scattered body parts and belongings that it is hard to piece them together. Sometimes body parts get mixed with those of others. During the 1995 Oklahoma bombing, the owner of a discovered foot was identified through genetic testing, but it turned out she had already been buried with both legs. This meant one leg belonged to someone else. At the time, DNA testing on embalmed bodies was impossible, so the owner was never found.

For these reasons, thousands of remains of 9/11 victims are currently stored in a special repository within the granite plaza of the World Trade Center, awaiting advances in DNA technology.

Robert Jensen, chairman of Kenyon International, a disaster recovery company that has worked at sites including the 9/11 attacks, the 2004 South Asia tsunami, the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Oklahoma bombing, and the London Grenfell Tower fire, says, “We cannot know what people caught in disasters thought in their final moments,” adding, “When handling their bodies, we only hope that the words they could not say and the things they could not do in their abruptly ended lives do not remain as regrets.”

He also introduces the book by saying, “This book talks about how not to be overwhelmed by situations, how to see the positive aspects in circumstances, how to solve problems, and how to guide people from their past lives to a newly changed future life.”

The Story of Belongings | Written by Robert Jensen | Translated by Kim Seonghoon | HanbitBiz | 408 pages | 19,800 KRW