By Jackie Hajdenberg
More than eight decades after his plane mysteriously went down in what was known as the “Chinese theater” in World War II, a Baltimore-born Jewish fighter pilot has received a proper burial, according to the United States Department of Defense.
The remains of Lt. Morton Sher — identified earlier this year — were buried (with dirt from Israel placed over his coffin) in Greenville, South Carolina, on Sunday, Dec. 14, on what would have been his 105th birthday.
Sher was a member of the famed pilot group known as the “Flying Tigers,” formed to protect China from a Japanese invasion in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7, 1941.
Sher was piloting a P-40 Warhawk over Hunan Province in central China when shot down by Japanese bombers on Aug. 9, 1943. He was 22. His mother, Celia, received Sher’s Purple Heart that same year.
Sher’s squadron put up a memorial stone at the crash site in Xin Bai Village, and a postwar army review in 1947 concluded that his remains were likely destroyed in the crash and assumed to be unrecoverable.
Two attempts were made to locate his remains in 2012 and 2019, but neither was successful. A breakthrough came last year when a Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency excavated a crash site in the province where Sher’s plane fell, and then last April when DNA analysis was conducted.
The match was confirmed in June.
Though born in Baltimore, Sher moved, as a young boy, with his family to Greenville, where they belonged to Congregation Beth Israel, a Conservative synagogue.
In high school, Sher was a member of the aviation club and enrolled in ROTC. Sher was a founding member of B’nai B’rith Youth Organization’s Aleph Zadik Aleph chapter in Greenville, according to the funeral home that organized his burial.
“He dreamed of being a pilot,” Sher’s nephew, Steve “Morton” Traub told Greenville’s local NBC station. “This guy did a lot for his country. He was my hero.”
Traub — who never met his uncle, but heard plenty of stories and read his letters — was raised by Sher’s father, David.
“I wish I had known him, but if he had [lived], I wouldn’t have been named after him. I feel like I knew Morton because I knew Papa,” Traub said.
Morton Sher is survived by his sister, Carol Fine of Greenville; four nephews, Steve Traub of Black Mountain, North Carolina, Allan Fine of Columbus, Georgia, Bruce Fine of Greenville, and Joel Fine of Columbus, Georgia; a niece, Elizabeth Sher of Campobello, South Carolina; seven grandnieces and one grandnephew; as well as several great-grandnieces and great-grandnephews.
Jackie Hajdenberg wrote this article for the JTA global Jewish news source. Jmore staff contributed to the report.
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