News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci
(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: POW-MIA Remarks - Benjamin Gilman

Date: September 22, 1998

POW/MIA RECOGNITION DAY
HON. BENJAMIN A. GILMAN (Extension of Remarks - September 17, 1998)

[Page: E1749]

HON. BENJAMIN A. GILMAN

in the House of Representatives

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1998

Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to remind my colleagues of the importance of National POW /MIA Recognition Day, which falls on September 18, 1998. I urge my colleagues to participate in recognizing America's heroes; those who are presumed missing in action.

Our Nation has fought six major conflicts in its history. In those wars, over 500,000 Americans have been taken prisoner-of-war. Those servicemen and women experienced numerous hardships and treatment which could often be described only as barbaric during the course of captivity. Those Americans imprisoned by the Japanese during World War II faced the worst possible conditions on captivity and were firsthand witnesses to the utter depravity of their fellow men.

I have been a strong advocate of an accounting of our POW /MIA's since I first came to the Congress in 1973. I proudly supported the creation of the Select Committee on Missing Persons in Southeast Asia, the National POW /MIA Recognition Days, and POW /MIA legislation because I believe the families of those who are missing in action deserve no less. Hopefully, 1998 will be the last year that such an occasion will be necessary. My hope is that by this time next year, our Government will have obtained a full accounting of those brave Americans whose fates, at this time, are still unknown.

Permit me to focus special recognition on those POW /MIA's from Korea and Vietnam. Despite the administration's best assurances to the contrary, many of us remain unconvinced that the governments of North Korea and Vietnam have been fully cooperating with the United States on this issue. Regrettably, by normalizing relations with Vietnam, I believe that we have withdrawn our leverage over the Vietnamese Government on this issue.

In recent years, we have learned from testimony presented to congressional committees that Soviet and Czech military doctors performed ghastly medical experiments on U.S. POW's in North Korea during the Korean war. These experiments were used to test the psychological endurance of American GI's, as well as their resistance to chemical, biological, and radioactive agents. Moreover, Soviet and Czech intelligence agents helped organize shipments of POW's to the U.S.S.R. during the Vietnam war, and that, at least, 200 were sent between 1961 and 1968.

It is my hope that this information will lead to a further clarification regarding the safe return of any living POW's who may still be in captivity in Korea or elsewhere.

Americans should always remember the love of country that America's veterans have shown as well as their personal sacrifices, courage, convictions, and dedication to freedom that these individuals have exhibited.

Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman, the gentleman from Arizona, Bob Stump quoted a portion of President Abraham Lincoln's letter to a mother who lost five sons on the battlefield:

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I cannot refrain from tendering to you the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

May it be of some solace to the families and loved ones of our missing and POW's that there are many of us in the Congress committed to a full and final accounting of our missing.