A boot pulled from a corroded ship off the Philippine coast may be the most promising find yet in an 80-year effort to bring World War II prisoners home. The Wall Street Journal‘s Mike Cherney follows a US mission at the wreck of the Oryoku Maru, a Japanese “hellship” sunk by American planes in 1944 while carrying 1,619 Allied POWs, most of them Americans. About 250 Americans are believed to have gone down with the ship. Divers working from the USNS Salvor have cut into the flattened wreck and vacuumed out sediment, turning up artifacts including two US-marked boots, an
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