To What Remains

TO WHAT REMAINS is the story of Project Recover, a small team of accomplished scientists, oceanographers, archaeologists, historians, researchers and service men & service women who have dedicated their lives to scouring the depths of the ocean and the farthest corners of the earth to search for, recover, and repatriate the remains of the more than 80,000 Americans missing in action since WWII. In what one MIA family member aptly described as “looking for the smallest needle in the largest haystack,” Project Recover team members comb through military action reports to identify broad swaths of ocean and land where U.S. servicemen and women were killed over 75 years ago, and execute onsite searches involving a combination of technology (sophisticated underwater drones) and painstaking manual labor (scuba dives and archaeological digs). The team travels to some of the most beautiful tropical locations in the world, where unimaginable atrocities once occurred.

While the search for a single crash site can require years of effort, the Project Recover team members are fueled by the sense of purpose that comes from identifying the remains of Americans who gave their lives in service, returning those remains to their proper home, and bringing closure to families who had nothing more than a picture on a mantle, vague memories passed down from prior generations, and unanswered questions.

In breathtaking imagery filmed over several years and intimate interviews with Project Recover team members and MIA families, To What Remains takes viewers inside this emotional journey to honor our fallen servicemen and women, from the discovery of wreckage on the seafloor in the South Pacific, to the living room of a stunned family in middle America, to a well-deserved final resting place at home.