From May 1946 to December 1951, the United States government, with the help of civilian workers, undertook the Return of the Dead Program, a mass repatriation effort for fallen World War II soldiers. Through this program, the United States recovered more than 171,000 bodies -- all returned to the United States for burial. At the same time, another 110,000 bodies were buried in foreign American cemeteries. Although the program did return a significant number of fallen soldiers buried in temporary graves, it did not address the fallen missing in action. My research uncovers the efforts of civilian and governmental agencies to repatriate WWII veterans who were MIA in the European theater from the 1960s onward. Few historians have addressed the topic of the repatriation of these American soldiers. My research, therefore, utilized records from the Department of Veteran Affairs to reconstruct how civilian groups inspired federal action, culminating in the creation of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency in 2015. Despite the DPAA's successful return of nearly 1,000 Americans missing from World War II, the continued recovery and return of soldiers missing in action would not be successful without the efforts of American and European civilian-led groups, like Archeologo Dell'Aria. The United States and non-governmental groups must continue their combined efforts to repatriate the dead.