World War II dog tags may solve 70-year-old mystery

A small find in the South Pacific could solve a big mystery for one American family.

A pair of old and battered dog tags belonged to U.S. Army Private Bernard Gavrin who was reported missing in action in 1944 during the battle of Saipan. No one ever knew what happened.

But the Sun Sentinel reports Gavrin's family might be closer to solving the 70-year-long mystery thanks to a group from Japan that searches for soldiers' remains. They found the tags in a cave on the island and told Gavrin's family.

81-year-old David Rogers, Gavrin's nephew who was 12 when he disappeared, told the Sentinel, "Words cannot do justice to the shock this news left me with. A lot of American soldiers were pushed into the ocean. We thought he drowned. Now we know that wasn't the case."

The remains are now in Hawaii for genetic testing to confirm that they are Gavrin's, if so - Rogers says he plans to hold a military funeral at Arlington Cemetery in Washington DC.

This is far from the first time dog tags have turned up decades later.... A U.S. Marine Corps sergeant lost his dog tags in Vietnam 46 years ago but found them last year... on Facebook.

And a veteran in New York received his tags in the mail from a woman in France 69 years after he lost them in a farm field.