News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: U.S. Repatriates Possible Vietnam War Remains

Date: October 04, 2001

" U.S. Repatriates Possible Vietnam War Remains
HANOI (Reuters) - Even as its forces massed elsewhere for a newly declared war on terrorism, America's military held a ceremony in Hanoi on Thursday to repatriate remains that could be those of U.S. servicemen missing from the Vietnam War.

At a solemn ceremony at Hanoi's Noi Bai airport, personnel from the U.S. armed services carried five aluminum caskets draped with the American flag aboard a U.S. military transport aircraft.

The remains will be flown to the U.S. military's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii for analysis to see if they can be matched with records of some of the 1,473 service personnel still listed as missing in action (MIA) in Vietnam.

Hawaii-based Brigadier General Steven Redmann, Commander of Joint Taskforce Full Accounting, told reporters that the mission of searching for unaccounted servicemen who fought in the war in Southeast Asia was a priority.

``It's very important that we come out and we finally do answer not only to the families, but to all the people, the real servicemen employed by the government with those statistics of the unaccounted for,'' Redmann said at the end of the ceremony.

Asked of the significance of the search while the United States was preparing an expected retaliation for the September 11 attacks, Redmann said: ``As you know the Americans, through operations like this, take the Americans' lives very seriously.''

He said the Americans with a team effort would do all to fight with the people responsible for the attacks.

REMAINS RECOVERED

Gary Flanagan, a casualty resolution specialist at the Hanoi office of Joint Taskforce Full Accounting, the U.S. MIA search effort, said the recovery of the remains followed searches in five Vietnamese provinces.

These included excavations of the crash sites of four aircraft, the last of which crashed in November 1967, and an area where a serviceman was reported missing on a ground mission in southern Vietnam.

Flanagan said the searches took place in Vinh Phuc and Haiphong in northern Vietnam and in the southern provinces of Binh Phuoc, Long An and the Ho Chi Minh City municipality.

He said the aircraft lost were an F105 fighter, an FA5c reconnaissance plane, and a F100 fighter. He said the fighters were single-seat aircraft but the reconnaissance plane carried more than one person.

The U.S. involvement in Vietnam ended in defeat for its ally South Vietnam to the northern communists in 1975.

While the United States has since normalized relations with Hanoi, it still considers accounting for its war dead its highest priority in relations with the communist government, which cooperates in the search efforts.

As of September 19, Washington listed 1,956 service personnel unaccounted for in Southeast Asia, the majority in Vietnam.

Since MIA searches began in the 1970s, 452 cases have been resolved in Vietnam, 152 in Laos, 23 in Cambodia and two in China.

Search efforts were temporarily halted after a Russian-made helicopter carrying seven American and nine Vietnamese searchers crashed into a hill in central Vietnam in April, killing all of those aboard.

However, Redmann reaffirmed that the mission in Vietnam will continue.

``We will continue to do operations here, we will continue to use helicopters in our operation,'' he said, adding that he was confident with flying service provided by a Vietnamese military-run company. "