News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Perils of Recovery

Date: November 27, 2000

"Kadena ordnance disposal unit aids in search for MIA remains
By Carlos Bongioanni
Okinawa bureau

KADENA AIR BASE — They got "filthy dirty and dog tired" from running shovels through trenches and sifting through mounds of dirt for 10 to 12 hours a day, every day for an entire month.

It was hard, unglamorous work, for sure, but Staff Sergeants Perry Mooney and Mark Trice called it the most significant and satisfying work of their Air Force careers.

Mooney and Trice, members of Kadena’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit, were part of two teams that went to North Korea this past summer to unearth the remains of American troops who fell in combat 50 years ago.

In recent years, the North Korean government has allowed the United States to repatriate its war dead. Trice and Mooney were part of the first recovery missions the U.S. military sponsored this year.

"Most guys killed during war, die with their full combat gear on," said Mooney, who was part of an 18-member team that went to the Sangu-ri, and Kujang districts of North Korea in August and September.

EOD team members are brought along on the digs to remove unexploded ordnance from the dig sites, Mooney said.

Spending a majority of their time in the trenches getting their fingernails soilded and their sweaty faces caked in mud and dirt, the EOD specialists uncovered hundreds of small-arms rounds, some grenades, mortars and at least one "large chunk of high explosives."

"This is not a menial task," Mooney said. "We’re not digging a fence-post hole. We’re bringing home guys who made it possible for us to enjoy our freedoms."

"Everybody on the team, from the camp commander on down, had to dig," Mooney said. "You have to do it by hand. A great deal of the dirt is removed one pail at a time."

Even some of the North Korean soldiers escorting the American teams helped at the dig sites, Mooney said. It was one of the great ironies of the trip, he said, seeing the North Koreans "digging up guys that their forefathers killed."

When Trice volunteered for the mission in June and July, he did it knowing his team might not find anything. He was ecstatic, he said, when his team made a "huge find" in a small 5-by-12-foot area where bodies were piled one on top of the other.

In all, his team uncovered the remains of 14 Americans. Besides the bones, they found shoes, helmets and dog-tags still intact, as well as weapons and ammunition.

After making the finds, the team members turn over the ordnance rounds and weapons to the North Koreans. The human remains they put in steel-coffin containers which are transported back to the U.S. Army’s Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii.

Both Trice and Mooney said visiting a country that has been virtually closed to Americans for the past 50 years was an "awesome" experience, even if they spent most of their time at the dig sites. Though they did not have the freedom to roam the country, they did have guided tours of sites in Pyongyang.

The highlight of the trip, however, was being a part of the repatriation ceremony at Yakota Air Base, Japan. Trice called the ceremony "tough" in the sense that it was a "hard-core moving experience ... It was hard to keep from losing control," he said.

Mooney agreed.

"It’s pretty touching ... You need to rethink your values if you’re not moved by it," he said of the repatriation ceremony that brought tears to his eyes.

Imagining that he was one of the fallen dead, Mooney said, "It’s nice to know someone is going to come and get me, and that 50 years later, they’re going to treat me with a certain measure of respect." '