Twenty-seven Black Tuskegee Airmen disappeared during WWII bombing missions in Europe. NPR investigative correspondent Cheryl W. Thompson's new book, Forgotten Souls, reveals their personal stories and why families still await answers—and acknowledgment—from the U.S. government decades later. The 27 missing Tuskegee Airmen were mostly college-educated men in their 20s with families, girlfriends, and dreams, not just military statistics or abstract heroes. Families of disappeared airmen never received government contact or closure; most parents died without knowing what happened to their sons, leaving psychological trauma that persists in their descendants today.