When the U.S. Department of Defense brings home the remains of missing soldiers who fought in long-ago battles, a special unit hosts an “arrival ceremony” to welcome the service men and women home.

These ceremonies, which take place in Honolulu, include flag-draped coffins coming off of parked military aircraft. Families and veterans attend the events. The “Star-Spangled Banner” and “Taps” are both played in honor of the dead.

But here’s the problem as NBC News describes it — it’s all for show.

The remains in the coffins usually don’t belong to who officials said they belonged to, and the planes usually weren’t even operational. They were towed into place.

The ceremonies also have been known, at least among some of the military and civilian staff here, as The Big Lie.

Photos behind the scenes show that the flag-draped boxes had not just arrived on military planes, but ended their day where they began it: at the same lab where the human remains have been waiting for analysis.

The Pentagon insisted that the flag-draped cases do contain human remains recently recovered, just not ones that arrived that day. It said its staff “treat the remains with the utmost of care, attention, integrity, and above all, honor.” The Pentagon statement did not explain why the rituals were called “arrival ceremonies” if no one was arriving, or why the public had been told that remains removed that morning from the lab were about to go to the lab to “begin the identification process.”

In response to NBC News’ investigation the Pentagon said the “arrival ceremonies” will now be called “honors ceremonies.”

Check out the full story here.

Photo: An honor guard escort transfers a coffin during an “arrival ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam in April 2012. (Screen shot from NBC News)

—Nick Grube