An American Jewish fighter pilot whose plane was shot down in the Chinese theater during World War II was given a proper burial 82 years after his plane went down, according to the United States Department of Defense.
The remains of Lt. Morton Sher, identified earlier this year, were buried in Greenville, South Carolina, on Dec. 14 - what would have been his 105th birthday.
Sher was a member of the pilot group known as the “Flying Tigers,” formed to protect China from Japanese invasion following the assault on Pearl Harbor in 1941. He was piloting a P-40 Warhawk when Japanese bombers shot him down on Aug. 9, 1943. His mother, Celia, received Sher’s Purple Heart that same year.
Sher’s squadron put up a memorial stone at the crash site in Xin Bai Village, and a postwar army review in 1947 concluded that his remains had been destroyed and were assumed to be unrecoverable.
Two attempts were made to locate his remains in 2012 and 2019, but neither was successful. A breakthrough came in 2024 when the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency excavated a crash site in the province where Sher’s plane fell, and then in April 2025, when DNA analysis was conducted. The match was confirmed in June.
Dreamed of being a pilot
Sher was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on Dec. 14, 1920, and his family later moved to Greenville, where they became members of the Conservative synagogue Congregation Beth Israel. In high school, he was a member of the aviation club and enrolled in ROTC. Sher was a founding member of B’nai B’rith Youth Organization’s Aleph Zadik Aleph chapter in Greenville, according to the funeral home that organized his burial.
“He dreamed of being a pilot,” Sher’s nephew, Steve “Morton” Traub told Greenville’s local NBC station. “This guy did a lot for his country. He was my hero.”
Traub, who never met his uncle but heard stories and read his letters, was raised by Sher’s father, David.
“I wish I had known him, but if he had, I wouldn’t have been named after him. I feel like I knew Mason because I knew Papa,” Traub said.