News-Info-Alerts

Re: Honoring A Mother's Wish

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: November 20, 2003

"Bob Kerr: A half century of honoring a mother's wish

01:00 AM EST on Sunday, November 16, 2003

Bob Dumas promised his mother just before she died that he would find her youngest son, his youngest brother, if it took the rest of his life.

After 50 years, he is still at it.

He has a picture that he says was taken by an Associated Press photographer in 1953. It shows a large group of Americans about to be freed from a North Korean prisoner-of-war camp. He has circled the face of Roger Dumas in red.

But Roger Dumas, one of four Dumas brothers to serve in Korea, never made it home. And Bob Dumas has never given up on the idea that his brother was left behind and might be among prisoners still alive and still being held.

It is not a popular idea, at least not among government officials who have responsibility for resolving the status of soldiers who have never returned, alive or dead, from their wars. It complicates international relations, muddies the waters of diplomacy.

Just imagine the national impact of shambling, hollow-eyed men coming back home after decades to dispel the long-cherished idea that Americans never leave their own behind. There would be embarrassing questions that no one would want to answer.

Americans like things tidy. They like to move on. They don't like ugly loose ends and lingering doubts.

Books are written about American prisoners of war. They raise the possibility of some still being alive and ask the question of why the government is so quick to dismiss the possibility. The books are eagerly devoured by people who are already convinced. Other than that, they don't sell very well.

So Dumas has hit some stone walls in his efforts to honor that promise to his mother and answer once and for all the question of whether some prisoners of war remained prisoners of war after the war was over.

He has evidence. He has enough to raise the possibility that not everyone returned or died. But the people that can clear the way for him to find the final answers are not clearing the way.

I met Dumas last week when Vin Russo and I drove to Dumas's home in Canterbury, Conn., and sat down in the basement office that has become his base of operations for finding the truth about his brother and thousands of others.

Russo, who lives in North Providence and is also a Korean War veteran, met Dumas 15 years ago, and they have done some traveling in the search for answers. They have had their hopes raised at times. But something always happens. The doors are closed, access denied.

I have friends who have never given up on the idea that there are still Americans from the Vietnam War being held somewhere. They fly the black MIA-POW flag and keep pushing for a more thorough accounting. But hearings chaired by none other than U.S. Sen. John Kerry, a Vietnam veteran himself, were wrapped up in 1992 without providing satisfactory answers to anyone.

These people don't give up, often driven by the memory of friends or family members never accounted for. And they are moved to the fringe, told again and again to get over it.

"They're waiting for us all to die," Russo once told me. "They just want us to fade into the woodwork."

There will be no fading. Dumas and Russo and a small, dedicated group of veterans and veterans' families are too angry to fade, too convinced of Americans deserted by their country.

They remember when former Russian President Boris Yeltsin said that American prisoners from Vietnam were held in Russia. U.S. officials said Yeltsin misspoke.

They cling to the testimony of North Korean defectors who tell of seeing American prisoners, even though that testimony is officially dismissed as well. They quote Col. Millard Peck, who quit as chief of the Special Office for Prisoners of War and Missing in Action because he said he wasn't allowed to do his job.

"The entire charade does not appear to be an honest effort, and may never have been," said Peck. "I have seen firsthand how ready and willing the policy people are to sacrifice or abandon anyone who might be perceived as a political liability."

And they keep hoping someone who can do something will listen.

As we sat in his basement, with piles of documents spread out on a table, Dumas took out a picture taken in 1987 of him and the Rev. Jesse Jackson and three men who he says were North Korean officials. It is a part of one of the near misses. Jackson, says Dumas, was determined to travel to North Korea to find POWs and bring them home. It would have been a political gold mine for Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign. But it never happened. Dumas believes the U.S. State Department intervened.

Dumas and Russo have been to Washington, where Dumas has testified before congressional committees. Dumas has taken his evidence. He has told of former prisoners who were with his brother and told Dumas that on the day the prisoners were released, his brother was taken away.

To force the issue, he filed a damage suit in federal court in February 1981 against President Ronald Reagan. It got him some attention. It didn't get him any answers.

He testifies, he gives speeches, he tries to interest the news media in the story. As he talks, he shuffles through those seemingly endless piles of documents to find one that illustrates a particular part of the POW issue.

He says he came close with the CBS news operation a couple of times. A reporter came to the house in Canterbury. Dumas was told it was a hell of a story. But it was never told on CBS.

He is in his 70s now, and he could be forgiven for packing it in, for looking back on a half century of frustration and government roadblocks and figuring he has done all he could to honor his mother's wish.

But there is still that possibility, which for him is a certainty: There are men who were left behind and his brother could still be alive and a prisoner.

The passion and loyalty Dumas and Russo bring to their quest is as admirable as it is rare. They really can't give up. It would be denying a part of who they are and betraying men for whom they believe they are the last hope for freedom.

That so few people seem to care, that the government seems more intent on avoiding embarrassment than finding the truth, does not discourage them.

But, as veterans who care deeply, it saddens them.

Bob Kerr can be reached by e-mail at bkerr@projo.com.

©Providence Journal"