Editing Korean Air Lines Flight 007 (section)

==Human remains and artifacts==
===Surface finds===
No body parts were recovered by the Soviet search team from the surface of the sea in their territorial waters, though they would later turn over clothes and shoes to a joint U.S.–Japanese delegation at [[Nevelsk]] on Sakhalin. On Monday, September 26, 1983, a delegation of seven Japanese and U.S. officials arriving aboard the Japanese patrol boat ''Tsugaru'', had met a six-man Soviet delegation at the port of Nevelsk on Sakhalin Island. KGB Major General A. I. Romanenko, the Commander of the Sakhalin and Kuril Islands frontier guard, headed the Soviet delegation. Romanenko handed over to the U.S. and the Japanese, among other things, single and paired footwear. With footwear that the Japanese also retrieved, the total came to 213 men's, women's, and children's dress shoes, sandals, and sports shoes.<ref>''KAL&nbsp;007: The Cover-up'', David Pearce, Summit Books, N.Y., 1987, p. 250</ref> The Soviets indicated these items were all that they had retrieved floating or on the shores of Sakhalin and Moneron islands.

Family members of KAL 007 passengers later stated that these shoes were worn by their loved ones for the flight. Sonia Munder had no difficulty recognizing the sneakers of her children, one from Christian, age 14, and one from Lisi, age 17, by the intricate way her children laced them. Another mother says, "I recognized them just like that. You see, there are all kinds of inconspicuous marks that strangers do not notice. This is how I recognized them. My daughter loved to wear them."<ref>''Izvestia'', February 1991, p. 7</ref>

Another mother, Nan Oldham, identified her son John's sneakers from a photo in ''Life'' magazine of 55 of the 213 shoes—apparently a random array on display those first days at Chitose Air Force Base in Japan. "We saw photos of his shoes in a magazine," says Oldham, "We followed up through KAL and a few weeks later, a package arrived. His shoes were inside: size 11 sneakers with cream white paint."<ref name=princeton/> John Oldham had taken his seat in row 31 of KAL&nbsp;007 wearing those cream white paint-spattered sneakers.<ref name=princeton>{{cite web |url=http://www.princeton.edu/paw/archive_old/index.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20021226121042/http://www.princeton.edu/paw/archive_old/index.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=December 26, 2002 |title=Princeton Alumni Weekly Online |work=princeton.edu}}</ref>

Nothing was found by the joint U.S.–Japanese–South Korean search and rescue/salvage operations in international waters at the designated crash site or within the {{convert|225|nmi2|km2|adj=on}} search area.<ref>Brun, pp. 143–144.</ref>

===Hokkaido finds===
Eight days after the shoot-down, human remains and other types of objects appeared on the north shore of [[Hokkaido]], Japan. Hokkaido is about {{convert|30|mi|km}} below the southern tip of Sakhalin across the [[La Pérouse Strait]] (the southern tip of Sakhalin is {{convert|35|mi|km}} from [[Moneron Island]] which is west of Sakhalin). The ICAO concluded that these bodies, body parts, and objects were carried from Soviet waters to the shores of Hokkaido by the southerly current west of Sakhalin Island. All currents of the [[Strait of Tartary]] relevant to Moneron Island flow to the north, except this southerly current between Moneron Island and Sakhalin Island.<ref>Kantakov and Shevchenko, ''In situ observations of Tsushima and West Sakhalin currents near La Perouse (Soya) Strait''</ref>

These human remains, including body parts, tissues, and two partial torsos, totaled 13. All were unidentifiable, but one partial torso was that of a Caucasian woman as indicated by auburn hair on a partial skull, and one partial body was of an Asian child (with glass embedded). There was no luggage recovered. Of the non-human remains that the Japanese recovered were various items including dentures, newspapers, seats, books, eight KAL paper cups, shoes, sandals, sneakers, a camera case, a "please fasten seat belt" sign, an oxygen mask, a handbag, a bottle of dishwashing fluid, several blouses, an identity card belonging to 25-year-old passenger Mary Jane Hendrie of [[Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario|Sault Ste. Marie]], Ontario, Canada, and the business cards of passengers Kathy Brown-Spier and Mason Chang.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.upi.com/Archives/1983/09/12/Japanese-authorities-today-recovered-the-mutilated-body-of-a/5125432187200/ |title=Japanese authorities today recovered the mutilated body of a... |last=Kamiya |first=Antonio |date=September 12, 1983 |newspaper=United Press International |access-date=September 13, 2021}}</ref><ref name="Pearson-235">Pearson, p. 235</ref> These items generally came from the [[Aircraft cabin|passenger cabin]] of the aircraft. None of the items found generally came from the cargo hold of the plane, such as suitcases, packing boxes, industrial machinery, instruments, and sports equipment.

===Russian diver reports===
[[File:Moneron Island.jpg|thumb|[[Moneron Island]]]]
In 1991, after the [[collapse of the Soviet Union]], the Russian newspaper ''[[Izvestia]]'' published a series of interviews with Soviet military personnel who had been involved in [[Marine salvage|salvage]] operations to find and recover parts of the aircraft.<ref name="Illesh-Eng"/> After three days of searching using [[Naval trawler|trawlers]], [[side-scan sonar]], and [[diving bell]]s, Soviet searchers located the aircraft wreckage at a depth of {{convert|174|m|ft}} near Moneron Island.<ref name="Illesh-Eng"/><ref name="Izvestia-19910521">{{cite news |newspaper=[[Izvestia]] |date=May 21, 1991 |page=6 |author=Andrey Illesh |title=?}}</ref> Since no human remains or luggage were found on the surface in the impact area, the divers expected to find the remains of passengers who had been trapped in the submerged wreckage of the aircraft on the seabed. When they visited the site two weeks after the shoot-down, they found that the wreckage was in small pieces, and found no bodies:

<blockquote>I had the idea that it would be intact. Well, perhaps a little banged up... The divers would go inside the aircraft and see everything there was to see. It was completely demolished, scattered about like kindling. The largest things we saw were the especially strong braces—they were about one and a half or two meters long and 50–60 centimeters wide. As for the rest—broken into tiny pieces...<ref name="Illesh-Eng"/></blockquote>

According to ''Izvestia'', the divers had only ten encounters with passenger remains (tissues and body parts) in the debris area, including one partial torso.<ref name="WWI">''World Wide Issues'', February 6, 1991, p. 21</ref>

<blockquote>''Tinro ll'' submersible Captain Mikhail Igorevich Girs' diary: Submergence 10 October. Aircraft pieces, wing spars, pieces of aircraft skin, wiring, and clothing. But—no people. The impression is that all of this has been dragged here by a [[trawl]] rather than falling down from the sky...<ref>''Izvestia'', 28 May 1991, p. 8</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>Vyacheslav Popov: "I will confess that we felt great relief when we found out that there were no bodies at the bottom. Not only were no bodies; there were also no suitcases or large bags. I did not miss a single dive. I have quite a clear impression: The aircraft was filled with garbage, but there were really no people there. Why? Usually when an aircraft crashes, even a small one... As a rule, there are suitcases and bags, or at least the handles of the suitcases."{{citation needed|date=June 2023}}
</blockquote>

Some civilian divers, whose first dive was on September 15, two weeks after the shoot-down, state that Soviet military divers and trawls had been at work before them:

<blockquote>Diver Vyacheslav Popov: "As we learned then, before us the trawlers had done some 'work' in the designated quadrant. It is hard to understand what sense the military saw in the trawling operation. First, drag everything haphazardly around the bottom by the trawls, and then send in the submersibles?...It is clear that things should have been done in the reverse order."</blockquote>

ICAO also interviewed a number of these divers for its 1993 report: "In addition to the scraps of metal, they observed personal items, such as clothing, documents, and wallets. Although some evidence of human remains was noticed by the divers, they found no bodies."<ref>ICAO '93, Sect. 1.12.4</ref>