News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: News Release No. 451-99

Date: October 01, 1999

N E W S R E L E A S E

OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
(PUBLIC AFFAIRS)
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20301

PLEASE NOTE DATE

No. 451-99

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 1, 1999

CHINESE COOPERATION ON KOREAN WAR POW/MIAs CONTINUES

A Department of Defense delegation has concluded its second visit to China to seek additional cooperation in resolving Korean War POW and MIA cases.

Robert L. Jones, the deputy assistant secretary of Defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs, led a four man team to China last week to continue discussions there on U.S. servicemen missing in action from the Korean War. Jones had earlier presented 44 case inquiries to the Chinese. He requested specific information relating to Americans missing from four areas: Korean War POW camps; ground battles (Chosin Reservoir, Chongchon River, Demilitarized Zone); air losses; and POW names appearing in Chinese publications during the war.

"I am pleased that the Chinese government is taking seriously our efforts to resolve these POW and MIA cases," he said. "We all know the difficulties in locating or reconstructing records that may be 45 years old, but the Chinese have told me they will do everything they can to help us move forward on this humanitarian issue."

While in China he visited Mao'er Mountain near Guilin in the south and received briefings on the joint U.S.-China operation to recover the remains of WWII American airmen whose B-24 crashed in 1944. He was also invited to serve as the senior U.S. representative to participate in a repatriation ceremony to receive more American remains from that crash site. The remains, and those repatriated during the past two years, have been shipped to the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii. All the other remains from this excavation are undergoing forensic identification at this laboratory. Teams from the laboratory have been conducting excavations at the crash site each fall since 1997.