Editing Korean Air Lines Flight 007 (section)

===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>