A Jewish American fighter pilot shot down over China in World War II was finally laid to rest on American soil last week, with dirt from Israel placed over his coffin.
Lt. Morton Sher, who flew with the famed Flying Tigers, was buried on Sunday in a cemetery in Greenville, S.C., where his headstone and an empty grave have awaited him for 80 years.
The oldest son of David and Anna Sher, he was born in Baltimore before his family moved to the South. Active at Congregation Beth Israel in Greenville, Sher was also a founding member of the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization’s Aleph Zadik Aleph (AZA) teen fraternity in the city.
Enlisting in the Army Air Corps after studying at the University of Alabama as a commerce major, Sher was assigned to fly security missions over the Panama Canal before heading to China with the Flying Tigers. He traversed treacherous supply routes over the Himalayan Mountains, protecting bombers as they raided Japanese targets.
Sher was shot down after helping to successfully bomb a power plant that Japan had captured in Hong Kong. He suffered only a head bump and received a hero’s welcome in the Chinese village where he landed.
Over a summer 1943 series of strikes on Japanese targets, Sher was killed flying a mission near Hengyang City in China, and even as local villagers honored him by placing a memorial stone at the crash site, his remains were deemed unrecoverable, long believed to have been burned in the crash.
Acting on a private citizen’s tip, the U.S. Defense Department agency responsible for identifying and bringing home the remains of American servicemembers sent a team to China in 2012 and again in 2019 in search of Sher’s body. It came up empty.
Returning in 2024 for a more in-depth search, the team discovered the wreckage of Sher’s plane and remains, which were tested earlier this year and came back as a DNA match for Sher.
“We never knew Morton, but he was larger than life in the stories our family told us, his photos and his writings,” Bruce Fine, Sher’s nephew, told an Air Force publication.
“He was certainly a man who filled his pages of life with meaning, and he lived every day to its fullest,” Fine said.
‘No one is left behind’
With a job waiting for him at home, Sher reportedly wrote a letter home the day before he died, telling his parents, “I let another pilot take that instructing job, for I find things too exciting here to leave right now.”
Sher was again given a hero’s welcome last week, surrounded by family and community members for a memorial service, which included an honor guard and military flyover.
A Star of David topped his wooden casket, and rocks were placed on his headstone in the Jewish tradition.
“None of us knew Morton Sher. We didn’t know his name until recently, but as soon as we learned of his coming home, we leapt at the opportunity to honor him and support his family,” said Col. Brett Waring, 476th Fighter Group commander. “The bond that we share never dies, and no one is left behind or ever forgotten.”
