News-Info-Alerts

Re: Finding MIAs Depends on VN Keeping Promise

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: April 23, 2003

"Simmons: Finding MIAs depends on Vietnam Keeping the Promise

By RAY HACKETT
Norwich Bulletin; rhackett@norwichbulletin.com

U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, R-2nd District, meets Tuesday with Vice Minister of Defense Lt. Gen. Nguyen Huy Hieu in Hanoi during a trip to Vietnam.

HANOI, Vietnam -- The successes in recovering the remains of American servicemen listed as missing in action from the Vietnam War depends greatly on the cooperation of the Vietnamese government and its willingness to allow the investigations and excavations to take place within the country.

"The cooperation, I think, has been very good," U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, R-2nd District, said Tuesday. "But there is no doubt that more can be done. It's been good under the circumstances considering certain issues from their perspective."

And their perspective, Simmons said, revolves around issues such as Agent Orange and the effects it has had on the population there, and land mines, a lethal problem that continues to cause harm and death.

"They want the United States to do more in these areas," Simmons said in a telephone interview with the Bulletin from Hanoi Tuesday. "I think the challenge on both sides is to understand where the other side is on these issues."

Simmons is in the midst of a six-day visit to Vietnam where he hopes to take part in a Joint Task Force-Full Accounting investigation regarding the recovery of Waterford native, Capt. Arnold Holm, an Army helicopter pilot shot down over Vietnam in 1972.

In a series of meetings with Vietnamese officials Tuesday, Simmons, a member of the House Armed Service Committee, discussed the issues related to the ongoing effort to recover the remains of Americans listed as unaccounted for at the end of the war.

In a meeting with Nguyen Dy Nien, minister of foreign affairs, Simmons showed him a brochure from an April 4 town meeting in Waterford regarding the Holm case.

"He looked at the pamphlet that had a picture of Capt. Holm, and he studied it very hard," Simmons said. "And then, in perfect English, he said to me, 'He died so young.' He was obviously moved by it, adding that it was a sad thing of the past. I shared with him my belief that these recovery efforts will serve as a bridge between our pasts and our futures."

Since its inception in 1992, the Joint Task Force-Full Accountability has conducted more than 3,400 case investigations and 590 recovery operations in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, resulting in the recovery of more than 500 sets of remains.

The U.S. government spends $100 million a year on the recovery effort of missing soldiers from all wars.

When the Vietnam War ended in 1975, 2,584 American servicemen were listed as unaccounted for. Of that, 1,924 were MIAs in Vietnam, including 425 lost over the waters off the Vietnamese coast.

In his meeting Tuesday with Nguyen Van Dao, director of the Vietnam Office for Seeking Missing Personnel, Simmons expressed the U.S. government's desire to bring one of its own ships into the country to assist in the recovery efforts of those lost over the waters. It is request that has been made in the past, but one in which the Vietnamese government has yet to respond.

"I am hopeful that he will make that recommendation," Simmons said.

Simmons is scheduled to meet with the Chief of the Vietnamese National Assembly's Defense Committee today before departing for the city of Hue Thursday where the search for Holm and his two crewmen is under way.

That investigation, the third attempt to locate exactly where Holm's helicopter crashed, is part of the 73rd joint field activity conducted by the JTF-FA since 1992. A total of 95 team members, augmented by several hundred Vietnamese nationals, are conducting 22 search cases in four provinces and five recovery efforts in five provinces.

©2003 Norwich Bulletin. "