In May 1945, as World War II neared its end, a U.S. military plane crashed high in the mountains of the island then known as Dutch New Guinea. The 24 servicemen and -women aboard the plane had been on a pleasure jaunt, surveying a huge, unmapped valley that was home to a tribe that had first encountered people from the outside world only in 1938.

Most of the passengers died on impact or shortly after. Of the three who survived, John McCollom was unhurt, while Margaret Hastings and Kenneth Decker were badly injured.

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