When American soldiers were killed overseas during WWII, were they shipped home to be buried?

Not always lot's of American soldiers were buried in Europe not far from where they died. I'd guess that the family had a hand in the decision in where their sons and brothers and husbands and fathers were buried.

Many of them were. In fact, the shipping of remains after the war was the subject of a controversial editorial cartoon in the Washington Post by the famous cartoonist Herblock. He depicted the ghost of an American soldier talking to an emaciated European refugee child saying "They didn't ask me who should get the trip, kid".

The cartoon implied that the money spent on shipping the remains would have been better spent rebuilding Europe and helping the "Displaced Persons" (refugees).

Herblock later wrote that he had gotten a lot of hate mail accusing him of insulting the families of dead soldiers, but he also got one letter from a woman who had lost all her sons in the war who said that the cartoon had moved her so much that she had decided to adopt a refugee child.

Some of them were, when bodies could be recovered. Other soldiers were interred in cemeteries in Europe, many of which still exist, particularly in countries like France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

Yes

Age of the corpse, number of pieces of the corpse, ability to identify WHO the corpse is all played a factor.