No longer in existence. Merged with JTF-FA to become JPAC.
"History- USACILHI - United States Army Central Identification Laboratory - Hawai'i"
Since the 1840s, the US Government has made a concerted effort to recover and properly inter its service members killed in war. It was not until the Civil War, however, that the government assumed the dual obligation of identifying and burying its dead in registered graves. Through the efforts of volunteers, records were collected by various units and forward to The Adjutant General. In addition, systematic records were maintained for the wounded who died in hospitals. Unfortunately, as has always been the case, many men who died in battle were buried where they fell.
The Spanish-American War marked a major policy development. For the first time in US history, the remains of US servicemen interred in battlefield cemeteries on foreign soil were systematically disinterred and returned for permanent burial. With the outbreak of World War I, the US Government reflected on the lessons learned in Cuba, and moved quickly to authorize the return of remains of US soldiers from Europe. To meet this mission, a Graves Registration Service was introduced for the purpose of recovering and identifying American war dead.
During World War II, Congress again recognized the importance of returning the remains of US service members to their native soil and delegated this responsibility to the Secretary of the Army. Several temporary Army identification laboratories were established for this purpose, and for the first time, trained physical anthropologists and anatomists were employed for the task. In 1951 the laboratories were dissolved when their congressional charter expired.
With the onset of hostilities on the Korean Peninsula, the US reestablished a central identification unit in Kokura, Japan, to process United Nations Forces war dead. Like it predecessors, this laboratory was temporary in its charter. It closed in 1956.
Within a few years, young Americans were again making the ultimate sacrifice in a faraway land. While the war in Indochina raged, two US Army mortuaries operated in South Vietnam to identify the remains of US service members. After the withdrawal of US forces from South Vietnam, and the subsequent closing of the mortuaries in 1972 and 1973, the US Army established the Central Identification Laboratory, Thailand (CIL-THAI). The CIL-THAI's mission was to continue the search, recovery, and identification of US service members killed in Indochina.
Following the fall of the South Vietnamese government in 1975 a decision was made to relocate the laboratory to US soil. In May 1976 the US Army Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii (CILHI) was establish in Honolulu, Hawaii. With its renaming and relocation came an expanded mission: the recovery and identification of all unrecovered US service members from past wars. In addition, the CILHI was asked to assist in identifying remains from recent disasters, including the bombing of the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983; the air crash involving the 101st Airborne in Gander, Newfoundland, in 1985; the missile attack on the USS Stark in the Persian Gulf in 1987; and the explosion on the battleship USS Iowa in 1989.
In 1992 the Secretary of the Army acknowledged the CILHI's widening mission and authorized its expansion from 40 to 170 personnel. At approximately the same time, the laboratory moved to a new facility located on Hickam AFB, Hawaii.
For more information on CIL-HI and a virtual tour of the facility, please go to JPAC -
Artwork: AII POW-MIA