The Papua New Guinea National Museum and Art Gallery has renewed an agreement with the United States army with the aim of recovering and identifying Americans who lost their lives during the Second World War.
The Memorandum of Record allows the Joint Prisoner of War Missing in Action Accounting Command or JPAC to continue investigation and recovery operations in and around PNG's coastlines.
Mark Katakumb says the teams involved are able to identify missing aircraft by serial numbers and from there they can confirm how many men were onboard.
"And with that, they send a recovery team back to the site to conduct excavation and recover remains, skeletal remains. And then take them back to US for futher laboratory investigations."
Mark Katakumb says more than 2,000 Americans are believed to have died in PNG during the Second World War.