News-Info-Alerts

Re: Dumas - The 52 Year Search for the Truth

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: January 22, 2003

"Simmons meeting encourages POW brother

By RAY HACKETT
Norwich Bulletin

NORWICH -- Robert Dumas pored through the tattered blue folder, his fingers shifting though dog-eared papers in search of one correspondence among dozens he has received over the years.

Finding it, he hands it to U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, R-2nd District, seated next to him at the head of the conference room table to read.

The paper, faded from years of handling, is for Dumas another piece of "evidence" supporting his claim that American soldiers, captured by enemy forces a half-century ago, remain captive in North Korea. The blue folder contains papers gathered during his lifelong pursuit to find a brother who never returned home from the war.

"There's absolutely no doubt about that," Dumas said following the 30-minute meeting with Simmons. "There are live Americans from the North Korean War still in North Korea. I know that. And I know Rob is interested, that's why he wants to meet again."

There are more than 8,100 soldiers reported missing and unaccounted for from the Korean War that ended 50 years ago this year. Since 1996, the Department of Defense's Department of MIA/POW Personnel Office has conducted 25 individual search operations in North Korea, including three last year, that have accounted for the recovery of at least 178 remains.

The recent tension over North Korea's decision to restart its nuclear weapons program, however, likely will result in delaying any further recovery efforts indefinitely.

Tuesday's meeting with Simmons was all too familiar for the 73-year-old Dumas, who has spent 52 years searching for information regarding the whereabouts of his brother Roger who was reported missing in action Nov. 4, 1950, in North Korea.

Roger Dumas, who enlisted in the Army at 17, would 71 today. The Department of Defense POW/MIA division has officially classified him as a Korean War prisoner of war presumed dead. He was reportedly last seen in a North Korean prison in 1957.

"I don't know if he's dead or alive," Robert Dumas said. "What I do know is that there are Americans still in North Korea. We fly thousands of MIA/POW flags around this country, but nobody is doing is anything to get them back."

Simmons, who only recently became aware of the Dumas case, agreed to look into the matter and investigate Robert's claims concerning his brother's status. He agreed to meet with Robert again in a few weeks after completing the review, but said he is not overly optimistic that his review would turn up any new or significant findings.

"Part of the problem," Simmons told Dumas, "is that the country that could be the most help, in this case North Korea, is not being any help."

Dumas nodded, it was not something he hadn't heard before. Unfazed by the comment, he began searcihng his stack of papers for another document for the congressman to see -- one he was sure would convince Simmons that the evidence of Americans still being held prisoner is clear.

Over the years, Dumas has gathered hundreds of documents, news accounts and correspondences. He is convinced that his brother was alive and being held as a prisoner when the war ended. He claims other POWs reported seeing Roger Dumas loaded on a truck with other POWs and taken away just prior to the war's ending. The DPMO, after investigating hundreds of reported claims of live sightings, has dismissed most as unfounded.

Dumas' search for proof to the contrary has taken him to North Korea numerous times, and countless meetings with American military, political and Korean officials over the last five decades. He testified before two congressional hearings in the 1990s and was interviewed nationally and internationally dozens of times.

He left his meeting with Simmons saying he hoped his next meeting would be longer because, pointing to the blue folder, he has so much more to show him.

"There's nothing that will stop me," he said. "Nothing. In fact, I think we're closer now than we've ever been."

rhackett@norwichbulletin.com

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