{"id":208890,"date":"2026-04-24T22:36:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T22:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/208890\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T22:36:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T22:36:11","slug":"83-years-after-a-final-wwii-mission-in-the-pacific-new-yorks-nicholas-governale-comes-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/208890\/","title":{"rendered":"83 years after a final WWII mission in the Pacific, New York’s Nicholas Governale comes home"},"content":{"rendered":"

U.S. Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. Nicholas Governale, handsome and young and carrying a grown man\u2019s burdens, left Brooklyn on World War II\u2019s cusp. Not until his bones came back this week did his family celebrate a funeral mass.<\/p>\n

They did this Friday at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Roman Catholic Church in Williamsburg \u2014\u00a0not his parents or his four brothers and sisters, because those generations have passed, but their descendants from East Northport and Queens and farther afield, nieces and nephews and cousins grown into the middle age he did not reach.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are doing what we know my grandparents would have wanted: bring him home, give him a mass, and for him to be buried in the family plot,\u201d said Anthony Veneziano, 57, an assistant principal in New York City schools who lives in Howard Beach, in an interview this week.<\/p>\n

Governale was one of four crewmen killed July 10, 1943, when a B-25C-1 bomber on a scouting mission off Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands clipped trees on takeoff and crashed into the sea in deep water almost 2 miles offshore. He was 22, serving as a gunner.<\/p>\n

\"Staff<\/p>\n

Staff Sgt. Nicholas J. Governale in a family photo. <\/p>\n

For nearly 80 years the remains of the men aboard the plane were deemed unrecoverable by the U.S. military, among at least 71,762 service members the Defense POW\/MIA Accounting Agency says are still missing from World War\u00a0II.<\/p>\n

The War Department and a DPAA antecedent, the American Graves Registration Service, knew roughly where the plane went down, but it took modern technology to locate it precisely enough for recovery. In 2017, Project Recover, a Bend, Oregon, nonprofit that searches for Americans missing in action, did so after surveying a roughly 9-square-mile area of ocean floor with two sonar-equipped autonomous underwater vehicles. The plane\u00a0was under 121 feet of water.<\/p>\n

In 2022 and 2024, missions that were delayed by the coronavirus and then hampered by bad weather, DPAA dive teams recovered \u201cpossible human remains,\u201d bones and teeth the agency\u2019s forensic experts determined were consistent with a man Governale\u2019s height and age, according to a 2025 report by the agency.<\/p>\n

Again, the DPAA used technology unavailable in Governale\u2019s lifetime, including tests that compared genetic material found in the remains with mitochondrial DNA from Governale\u2019s maternal relatives. The genetic data was 876,000 times more likely to be observed in Governale\u2019s relatives than in the general Caucasian population, agency scientists concluded.<\/p>\n

\"Ed<\/p>\n

Ed Veneziano, left, and Anthony Veneziano, nephews of Sgt. Nicholas Governale, in Howard Beach on Wednesday. Credit: Randee Daddona<\/p>\n

Governale\u2019s nephews, Anthony and Ed Veneziano, learned last summer that their uncle\u2019s remains had been recovered. (DPAA publicly announced Governale had been accounted for in January.)<\/p>\n

The news was shocking, said Ed, 71, of East Northport, retired former partner of a family-owned clothing store, Cato\u2019s Army Navy, in Greenpoint. \u201cThese are things my family never talked about,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was a great loss for my grandmother and grandfather, something they wanted to put in the background and not think about.\u201d<\/p>\n

The nephews had, nevertheless, learned about their Uncle Nick from stories their aunts and uncles told at family gatherings. Some of their relatives had shared the fantasy that, since Governale\u2019s body had not been recovered, he might have survived the crash.\u00a0\u201cThere was always a hope that one day, there would be a knock at the door, and there he would be, or that he would be found somewhere on an island,\u201d Ed said.<\/p>\n

Governale was the eldest surviving son of five children born to Sicilian immigrants Anna and Calogero Governale (two older siblings had died as young children). He attended East New York Vocational High School with hopes of becoming a mechanic but dropped out at 16 to work as a laborer because his family needed money. Ed said that their grandmother, Governale\u2019s mother, had refused to wear black after he went missing. \u201cShe didn\u2019t want to accept the fact that he had passed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"Letters<\/p>\n

Letters sent to family at home in New York from Staff St. Nicholas J. Governale. Credit: Randee Daddona<\/p>\n

This year, as Anthony and Ed prepared for Governale\u2019s return, they sorted through a pile of documents Ed said his grandparents had preserved like \u201ctreasures\u201d: letters, telegrams and photographs Governale sent home from various postings including Mitchel Field on Long Island, Hawaii\u00a0and Guadalcanal, along with DPAA reports meticulously documenting its recovery work.<\/p>\n

The nephews shared the documents\u00a0with this reporter. They function more like a time capsule than a history of the age or even of the war. Governale\u2019s knowledge of events may have been incomplete, or he may have been deliberately omitting\u00a0information: He alludes several times to the military censors he knew were reading his letters before they got to his family\u00a0and repeatedly tells his mother not to worry about developments she may read in newspapers of the day.<\/p>\n

Thus the attack on Pearl Harbor, which precipitated the nation\u2019s entry into the war and may have precipitated Governale\u2019s own decision to rejoin the Army Air Corps after having worked as a civilian aircraft engine mechanic, merits mere lines in a 1941 letter: \u201cSunday morning 7th of December I reenlisted with my old outfit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Governale, the nephews said, was his family\u2019s breadwinner after his father, a laborer, became disabled and unable to work, and his anxiety over money is evident. \u201cAre you receiving my checks OK?\u201d he asks. \u201cI\u2019m sorry I can\u2019t send more,\u201d he says in another.<\/p>\n

He explains his decision to take a job in Hawaii: \u201cI would be a fool not to take a government job that will make me earn enough money to take care of us all.\u201d Later, he added: \u201cPlease explain to the kids that I\u2019m awfully sorry I couldn\u2019t send them anything for Christmas. Maybe someday I will be able to make it up to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some passages read as more meditation than missive. \u201cHow old is everyone and what class and grade are the kids in,\u201d he writes in October 1942. \u201cI\u2019ve been away so long I have lost track of all time.\u201d<\/p>\n

They show a young man trying to help the people he loves, and perhaps himself too, confront the possibility that he will die imminently. \u201cI guess by now you know about the crash,\u201d he writes, in 1940, of a plane crash over Bellerose that killed a friend. \u201cWe live in fame, and die in flames,\u201d he writes, apparently referencing a line from what is now the U.S. Air Force Song. \u201cWhen your number is up, you can\u2019t do anything about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He returns to the subject in 1941, in a letter that describes how the U.S., already \u201csending everything but men,\u201d was headed for war: \u201cThis little note that I\u2019m writing is not to scare you or bluff you. It\u2019s to make you all realize and face the truth. \u2026 If by Act of God anything ever happens to me, I want you to know that I have a $3,000 insurance policy in Mother and Dad\u2019s name and a will leaving all my belongings to them. We must face the truth so don\u2019t start to cry and worry. It is what any sensible person would do.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the summer of 1943, the letters from Governale stop, replaced by those from America’s military and political leaders. “Nothing the War Department can do or say will in any way repair the loss of your loved one,” writes Secretary of War Henry Stimson in October, 1943. “Please believe me, Sincerely Yours…”<\/p>\n

\"Veterans<\/p>\n

Veterans came to pay their respects Friday to Staff Sgt. Nicholas Governale, whose remains were laid to rest at Linden Hill United Methodist Cemetery in Ridgewood, Queens. Credit: Newsday\/Drew Singh<\/p>\n

In a phone interview earlier this week, Derek Abbey, Operation Recover\u2019s CEO, said he and other organization members would attend Governale’s\u00a0funeral. It was important, he said, \u201cto show our support, bear witness and participate in the memorialization.\u201d<\/p>\n

Abbey said he\u2019d worked for Recover for 22 years, first as a volunteer, later as an employee. Before that, he was an active duty Marine. He took it as an article of faith, he said, that people who swear an oath to defend the nation\u2019s Constitution are owed a corresponding guarantee: \u201cthat we will do everything we can to bring them home, and it doesn\u2019t have an expiration date.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the church on Friday, an honor guard of Patriot Guard Riders in motorcycle gear and service members in uniform assembled. Army Master Sgt.\u00a0Shana Israel, 40, who normally works at Fort\u00a0Dix, said that she\u2019d volunteered. \u201cI did not know this man,\u201d but he \u201cpaved the way for the younger generation. I thank him for that,\u201d she said in an interview.<\/p>\n

Inside, Ed Veneziano spoke briefly and eloquently to a crowd of about 100 mourners. Governale, he said, \u201crepresents the courage of a generation. He represents the sacrifice of immigrant families who gave everything to this country. He represents a son who deeply loved his family and never stopped thinking of home. Uncle Nicky, you were never forgotten, not for a single day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Nicholas<\/p>\n

\n\tNicholas Spangler is a general assignment reporter and has worked at Newsday since 2010.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. Nicholas Governale, handsome and young and carrying a grown man\u2019s burdens, left…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[54920,82826,9,24,11,10,8016],"class_list":["post-208890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-li-history","tag-military-affairs","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-suffolk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}