Missing veteran returns home

“I thought I’d have to wait until I die and go to heaven and say, ‘What happened?’” said Joyce De Soto, his wife, who thought the Air Force gave up the search.

Instead, she learned the crash site was identified in 1995, but the bombs on his plane never detonated. It took years to have the bombs defused and the site’s landscape and harsh weather made it difficult for a helicopter to access. Instead, crews had to machete their way through the jungle to access the site, said Brad De Soto, Col. Ernest De Soto’s oldest son.

In March, Joyce De Soto received a call in her Burlingame home that her husband’s remains were found. The call was from a funeral director in Delaware who works with the Air Force with these types of burials. She was so surprised by the message she called the Air Force to confirm it was true and not a prank call.

The Vietnam Office for Seeking Missing Persons reported finding Col. Ernest De Soto’s remains, life support equipment and other materials associated with the missing aircraft. The remains were sent to a laboratory where his identity was later confirmed, according to the POW network.

Col. Ernest De Soto will return in full uniform in a casket from Pearl Harbor to the San Francisco International Airport June 29. The De Soto family will be escorted by military personnel to the tarmac to meet with the casket.

“It is opening all the old wounds and we have been going through the pictures together and you sit there crying,” Brad De Soto said.

The following day, June 30, a memorial service will be held at Our Lady of Angels Church in Burlingame. From there, Col. Ernest De Soto will be brought to the Golden Gate National Cemetery and military personnel will provide a traditional military burial ceremony, by performing Taps and the 21-gun salute. The Patriot Guard Riders, a nonprofit organization that assists in military burials, will escort the hearse from the airport to the funeral parlor and then from the church to the cemetery.

“I always keep him and what may have happened to him in the back burner of my mind after so many years and for so many years I fought to get him back home. But after so many years, I couldn’t do it anymore,” Joyce De Soto said. “And now, I feel like this is all happening again.”

Combat mission

Col. Ernest De Soto and his navigator Lt. Frederick M. Hall were sent on a combat mission April 12, 1969. Their plane was one of three others that departed from Da Nang, South Vietnam, air base for a bombing mission in an unstated area, according to the POW network.

During the mission, the planes were headed through a cloud-covered mountain ridge and on the other side were met with heavy gun fire forcing them to abort the mission and turn around. However, De Soto and Hall’s plane crashed into the mountainside, according to Brad De Soto.

The other pilots reported the missing aircraft disappeared into the cloud bank and the last location it was logged was a Quang Nam Province, South Vietnam, a few miles north of the borders where Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia meet, according to the POW network.

The Paris Peace Accords concluded in 1973, which signaled the end of the U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. Vietnam agreed to return all prisoners of war and account for missing persons, however nearly 2,500 American soldiers never returned and reports surfaced that many were alive and being held as prisoners, according to the POW network.

It was a never-ending nightmare that lasted decades for the De Soto family.

Brad De Soto said every decade the family turned a new leaf of emotion. He said he was around 10 years old when his dad went missing but it took years for him to talk about it. Even now, talking about it feels taboo, he said. Mostly because Vietnam veterans and their families were treated so poorly after the war.

“It’s weird talking about it now, I have been trained for so long to not talk about it,” Brad De Soto said.

Early life

Born Dec. 30, 1931, Col. Ernest De Soto was raised in San Francisco and graduated from Balboa High School in 1948, where he met his wife Joyce De Soto. She said De Soto was extremely intelligent and would take multiple math classes at one time. He was also an All-City football athlete and received a scholarship to attend Stanford University, but never attended because he couldn’t afford the remainder of tuition. His friends used to call him the professor because he was so smart, she said.

However, around 1950, all of Col. Ernest De Soto’s friends were being drafted for the Korean war and he said he didn’t want to go to the U.S. Army and instead enlisted for the U.S. Air Force.

During his military career, Col. Ernest De Soto became an officer and then took a test to become a fighter pilot and passed it. He went back to school to become a lieutenant colonel and received a bachelor’s degree in Omaha, Nebraska, Joyce De Soto said. He was later promoted to colonel posthumously.

Most of what he did for the military was very secretive, she added, he was a very serious man when it came to his job. However, there was another softer side to him, she said. He loved to play games like Monopoly and bridge and taught Brad De Soto how to play chess. He was also a coin collector. He talked about going back to school to study economics and aspired to become a college professor one day, after his military career was over.

“He was always thinking and always wanting to know more,” Joyce De Soto said. “He talked about getting out of the military, but he never did, he just loved what he did.”

All of her emotions have resurfaced and she hopes after it is all over she will finally be at peace over the loss of her husband. Brad De Soto echoed those thoughts and said going through all of his dad’s stuff has brought back bittersweet memories. He coaches football in Southern California, and said he does it because he wants to be there for kids who are growing up without a father, much like he did.