News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: DPMO Update

Date: November 30, 2000

"Defense POW/MIA Weekly Update

November 22, 2000

MIA RECOVERY OPERATION CONCLUDES IN NORTH KOREA

Remains believed to be those of 15 American soldiers, missing in action from the Korean War, were repatriated on Veterans Day. This equals the largest number of remains recovered during a single joint recovery operation.

The remains were flown on a U.S. Air Force aircraft from Pyongyang, North Korea, under escort of a uniformed U.S. honor guard to Yokota Air Base, Japan, where a United Nations Command repatriation ceremony was held.

A joint U.S.-North Korea team operating in Unsan and Kujang counties, about 60 miles north of Pyongyang, recovered the remains during an operation that began Oct. 17. The area was the site of battles between Communist Chinese forces and the U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry Division, and 2nd and 25th Infantry Divisions in November 1950.

The 20-person U.S. team is composed primarily of specialists from the U.S. Army's Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii (CILHI).

This year's work in North Korea was the most productive to-date, recovering 65 sets of remains during five operations. As a result of negotiated agreements with North Korea, led by the Defense Department's POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO), 107 sets of remains have been recovered in 17 joint recovery operations since 1996. Five servicemen have been positively identified and returned to their families for burial with full military honors. Another 10 are nearing the final stages of the forensic identification process.

Officials at DPMO have initiated contact with North Korean officials to begin preliminary planning for formal discussions in December to establish a schedule of operations for 2001.

Of the 88,000 U.S. servicemembers missing in action from all conflicts, more than 8,100 are from the Korean War.

PRESIDENT VISITS CRASH SITE EXCAVATION IN VIETNAM

President Clinton visited a crash excavation site believed to hold the remains of Captain Lawrence Evert on November 18th during his trip to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The President was accompanied by Captain Evert's sons, Daniel and David.

During this solemn occasion the President remarked, "At this spot 33 years ago this month, Captain Lawrence Evert's F-105 was shot down. No parachute was seen, the area was heavily defended and there was no chance for a search.

"Today, I am honored to be here with Captain Evert's sons, Dan and David, and I thank them for coming. We believe we owe them, and all Americans like them, what they came here for -- a chance, finally, to take their father home."

During his visit the President praised the people of the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting and the Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii for all they do to "bring home comrades fallen in . . . war."

The President noted that our nation has made a commitment to achieve the fullest possible accounting for our missing service personnel. He also noted that meeting this commitment it is only possible through the cooperation and support of the Vietnamese government and the Vietnamese people.

The President thanked the Vietnamese people for their work in this endeavor, and expressed the thanks of the American people to the Vietnamese government for its support.

The President continued by stating, "Once we met here as adversaries; today we work as partners. We are committed to keep at it until we bring every possible fallen hero home. In the process, we are committed to building a new future for the children of Vietnam and the children of the United States, a future of friendship and cooperation.

"While working together to recover those who were lost in a long-ago war, we reduce the chances that any of our children will know war."

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Robert L. Jones accompanied the President during his visit to Vietnam. Complete text of the President's remarks, as well as transcripts of all press conferences and interviews may be found on the White House web site at http://www.whitehouse.gov.

DPMO ISSUES MONOGRAPH ON KOREAN WAR ACCOUNTING EFFORTS

As part of the Korean War 50 Year Commemoration DPMO has compiled a short history entitled, "The Effort to Account for U.S. Servicemen Missing from the Korean War." The report covers the POW negotiations that occurred in the first Truce Tent meetings in 1951, the United Nations Command-brokered POW and Remains Returns that occurred in 1953, 1954, and the later period of 1990-1994, as well as the more recent remains recovery efforts in North Korea.

The report also highlights investigative efforts in Russia with the U.S. - Russia Joint Commission and negotiations with the People's Republic of China on the POW/Missing Personnel issue.

As a sponsor of the Korean War 50 Year Commemoration, DPMO is issuing this report as one of its outreach contributions to the commemoration. The report will be available shortly on this web site.

DPMO HOSTS FAMILY UPDATE IN MIAMI

The November Family Update was held this past weekend in Miami and included over 50 family members of MIA servicemen from all conflicts. The attendees came from several states to join the government specialists from DPMO, CILHI, JTF-FA, AFDIL and the military service casualty offices.

These updates are held monthly in cities across the U.S. This marks the fifth year that DPMO and other government specialists have presented this updated information to family members. Approximately 1,750 families of missing in action servicemen have attended these meetings.

These all-day Saturday briefings were preceded by a Friday evening session designed especially for veterans and members of the general public. The Friday briefings lasted approximately two hours, and were open to the public.

Experts presented information on the latest technologies used to identify remains, including mitochondrial DNA. Archival research and other topics were also presented to the families. At the end of the all-day sessions, families were invited to individually review details of their own cases. This initiative assists families who are unable to travel to Washington, D.C. to review their individual case files.

Cities visited in recent months include Pittsburgh, Seattle, Spokane, St. Louis, Omaha, Atlanta, Portland, Pensacola, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Philadelphia, Detroit, Jacksonville, Memphis, Sacramento, Oklahoma City, and Birmingham, among others. This was the final Family Update for 2000. The next Family Update will be held in Las Vegas on January 20th. Families who wish to attend that update should contact their military service casualty officers immediately to register for the meeting.

U.S.-RUSSIA POW/MIA GROUP RENEWS COMMITMENT

The U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs renewed their commitment last week to continue cooperative efforts in search of information concerning the circumstances of loss and to establish the fate of missing servicemen.

During the two-day plenary session in Moscow, the commission's co-chairmen, Maj. Gen. Roland Lajoie, USA (retired) and Gen. Major Vladimir Zolotarev, signed the executive summary to the commission's joint report on the results of work conducted from 1995-2000. The executive summary highlights the commission's accomplishments and identifies areas for further research and investigation.

The commission was established in 1992 by the U.S. and Russian presidents. It is a group of senior American and Russian executive- and legislative-branch officials that meets periodically to assess and to coordinate policy, research and investigative efforts on clarifying the fate of missing American and Russian servicemen. Information of value to the commission is gained primarily through archival research and interviews of veterans, government officials, and other knowledgeable Russian and American citizens.

Highlights of last week's meeting included a report in the World War II working group on the successful August 2000 visit to Kamchatka when a team led by Lajoie and Col. Konstantin Golumbovskiy, the Russian deputy chairman of the commission, positively identified a U.S. PV-1 patrol bomber missing in action since March 25, 1944. Plans for a full-scale excavation of the site scheduled tentatively for summer 2001 were initiated by Michael McReynolds, the working group's U.S. co-chairman, and his Russian counterpart.

In the commission's Cold War working group, A. Denis Clift, the U.S. co-chairman, reported that painstaking research conducted by the Russian and U.S. sides has led to new information related to incidents of U.S. aircraft lost near the borders of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The Korean War working group discussed prospects for expanding archival research emphasizing reports from search groups involved in the recovery of U.S. aircraft and crews during the war. The concept was favorably received. The archives' management agreed to examine holdings at military museums and other facilities that may retain any records, artifacts or personal effects of U.S. service personnel from that period. The U.S. side raised once again the issue of U.S. military personnel who, based on a number of reports from a variety of sources, were sighted in the Soviet camp system (GULAG). The Russian side agreed to accept the reports, which have been incorporated into a single document, called the GULAG Study, for further examination.

In the Vietnam War working group, the Russian side agreed to continue its research in various archives seeking documentation that might clarify the fate of missing in action American servicemen from the Vietnam conflict. Both sides agreed to cooperate further on evidence that Soviet soldiers also might be missing from the war in Southeast Asia.

DPMO ASSISTS VIETNAM'S PERSONNEL ACCOUNTING EFFORTS

The President's delegation presented to Vietnamese officials documents from the U.S. government which may provide some resolution to the fates of some 300,000 Vietnamese who were killed in action, but whose bodies were not recovered.

In August 1999 the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs, Robert L. Jones, hosted a delegation of four senior archivists from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. This visit permitted them to research U.S. government archives for information that could lead to resolving some of the over 300,000 cases of Vietnamese personnel still unaccounted-for from the war in Southeast Asia. At the time of the visit, the Vietnamese learned that the History and Museum Division of Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps contracted to have more than 1.2 million pages of documents from the war digitized onto CD ROM format.

DPMO assisted the Vietnamese in obtaining copies of the initial installment of 45 CD ROMs to take back to Vietnam at the conclusion of their visit, and pledged to provide other installments of the discs when they become available from the Marine Corps. Each CD ROM contains 15,000 pages of documents on the war in Southeast Asia. The documents include mission reports from squadrons, situation reports, and operational messages of that historical period.

The second installment of 24 CD ROMs was recently published. They contain 360,000 pages of historical documents from the Marine Corps.

The final installment of 81 discs is to be completed at the end of November, and copies will be forwarded to DPMO, which will send them to Vietnam for retention and inclusion in their archival repository.
Published by the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office
2400 Defense Pentagon
Washington, DC 20301-2400
(703) 602-2102
www.dtic.mil/dpmo"