After the news of Jonestown came down, the US government asked the locals for permission to recover the bodies. This was granted.

A Special Forces A Team from Panama went down first to provide security. They were quickly followed by the Grave Registration platoon of XVIII Airborne Corps.

Everyone was very concerned about the exact number killed. The cultists had some sort of monkey as a pet. The soldiers kept trying to put the ape is a bag and include him in the count. You get silly in a situation like this.

The bodies were flown up to Dover. They were identified and returned to families. Nobody claimed Jones' after some period, he was cremated and dumped at sea.

I later served in Panama and read the official reports.

according to julia scheeres in 'a thousand lives' (and she got her information from the massive jonestown FBI files) the bodies were flown to dover, DE and returned to family members. some of the bodies had been identified by the very few survivors while still in jonestown, others identified by dental records or family. however over 300 bodies were unable to be identified. they were buried in a mass grave in oakland

almost half of the unclaimed bodies were children. it took several days to get the bodies out of jonestown and by then the heat of the jungle had caused the bodies to swell up making them very hard to identify, with the children swelling up more than the adults and most of them not having dental records on file. there were also a number of bodies that were identified but either had no family to be returned to, or the family could not afford to claim them.