July 1st 2026
Rory Hinkle
roryhinkle@berkeley.eduRory is a graduating senior, and a transfer student from Sonoma County. His research focuses on historical archaeology, forensic anthropology, and community-accountable methods. Outside of research, he loves nature, horror, and his fat cat, Duckie.
Over the past two years, the Oakland Aviation Museum has generously opened its doors to UC Berkeley anthropology students, allowing them to explore and document items in their World War II collection in an effort to advance identification efforts for missing and fallen United States aviators.
The Missing American Aircrews Project (MAAP), overseen by professor Jun Sunseri, is a research initiative set on creating a comparative database for WWII aviator uniforms, life support equipment, and aircraft elements. These comparatives are intended to increase the accuracy and efficiency of excavations conducted by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) and their partners; who seek to identify, recover, and repatriate the remains of all fallen soldiers from prior U.S. conflicts.
Of more than 80,000 unaccounted-for individuals, 80% are from World War II (DPAA, n.d.). The sites being excavated in these scenarios are huge, ranging from the size of a single aircraft (roughly 730 m2), to larger than a football field (roughly 5,350 m2), depending on the circumstances of the crash and the environmental conditions over the past eighty years. These sites also contain uniquely high volumes of non-diagnostic, very complex materials. Researchers must be able to delineate between probative and non-probative materials on site, or else they risk wasting significant time trying to identify unknown components, or simply excavating in the wrong part of the plane. The MAAP hopes to address this problem by creating and compiling comparative imagery into a centralized database, the Digital Aviation Library.
To help build this library, MAAP students sought out the support of local aviation museums. The Oakland Aviation Museum was the first to offer their help, and in the fall of 2024, MAAP students made their first visit.
A Contributor, who wishes to remain anonymous, has generously offered students access to his personal collection of aviator equipment. These students have continuously been granted the opportunity to touch, explore, photograph, and 3D scan anything that could be deemed diagnostic in the field.
The Oakland Aviation Museum’s mission is to educate people about the role of Oakland and the Bay Area in the development of aviation along the West Coast of the United States by collecting, preserving, and interpreting aircraft and aviation artifacts; inspiring individuals by connecting aviation’s history to our future (OAM, n.d.). The museum is housed in the original Boeing School of Aeronautics to help build this library, MAAP students sought out the museum, founded in 1929, and brought to the Oakland Municipal Airport because it was the largest municipal airport in the country at that time. The museum’s main operations are conducted out of a hangar, built in 1939 by the Boeing School of Aeronautics to train aviation mechanics for the United States’ Army Air Corps and Navy. This site allows ample indoor and outdoor space to display aircraft, engines, uniforms, and other historical aviation artifacts.
The museum was founded in 1981 as the Western Aerospace Museum, and in 1988 assumed its present title as the Oakland Aviation Museum.
The Contributor working the MAAP has been a volunteer with the museum for more than thirty years, first joining their ranks in 1992. He is also a Cal graduate, class of 1985! Go Bears!
In an interview with this Contributor, I asked him what initially drew him to collecting military paraphernalia. He responded that his father had served in World War II, as had many of the parents in their community. At the time, it was more common to have Veterans in the neighborhood, and it was quite normal for pieces of military equipment to be kept in the home following one’s discharge from service.
The Contributor notes that his family was not particularly sentimental about these items – his mother donated everything to a Catholic charity in Alaska, including discharge documents, which he jovially remembers being mailed home by a nun from the charity. It was this familial exposure, and the enduring narratives in popular culture, that spurred his initial interest in collecting and preserving military memorabilia. It began with odds and ends purchased from little “junk stores” – a local shop he remembers vividly was Lane’s Hole in the Wall on San Pablo Ave. in San Pablo, California. At this time, these items were relatively inexpensive and easy to find.
When asked if general attitudes around preserving, collecting, and sharing military history had shifted in recent years, he commented on the growing scarcity and rising cost of these items. At one point, this era of military gear was simply more prevalent. He notes that gear was often still available directly from Veterans whose family did not want to inherit the gear, “they were getting old and their kids couldn’t have cared less…they’d rather give it to me than throw it away.”
Our Contributor remembers being in college and reading about the excavation of a B-24 bomber crash site in New Guinea, wherein the process of collecting artifacts and remains was detailed. This was one of his first introductions to the recovery process now conducted by the DPAA. While working with our students to collect probative data at the museum, this Contributor took extreme care making sure that students could understand which components are more likely to survive and be diagnostic.
He stated that one of his goals was to be able to provide context to these individuals and materials, and “give people a sense of if they found this, what they might be “near.” The DPAA calls this archaeologically probative material; these artifacts tell researchers where they need to dig to potentially find and identify the remains of a missing individual (e.g., duty station elements, the sole of a worn boot, an oxygen mask plug). These materials may also have the chance of being forensically probative if they can directly lead to the identification of an exact missing person (e.g., dog tags, documented personal objects).
I asked him if he thinks that there is an increased expectation to provide digitized data, and if that impacted operations at the museum; he stated that smaller museums like the Oakland Aviation Museum are much more confined in the scope of what they can add on to their current workload, including digitization. He stated that volunteers like himself are often responsible for connecting the museum and its collections to greater uses in the outside world; the Missing American Aircrews Project being one such instance. It is here where student engagement has the greatest opportunity to spur mutual benefit – students gain experience, their collections are given new utility, and the museum has the opportunity to put their name on lucrative new research that brings new eyes to their collections and mission.
The Oakland Aviation Museum’s ongoing support of students and the MAAP perfectly illustrates their commitment to educating new generations about the history of aviation and connecting it to future applications. Their volunteers are the real deal, passionate, and extremely dedicated to sharing their knowledge. This museum is a Bay Area gem and highlights the best of community-oriented museum practices.
References:
Oakland Aviation Museum. (2025, February 7). Oakland Aviation Museum | Oakland, CA.
https://www.oaklandaviationmuseum.org/
Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. (n.d.). Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/
