Re: Recovery Efforts Continue in North Korea, Russia

Date: April 18, 2004

"MIA recovery efforts continue in North Korea, Russia

The Department of Defense announced April 12 that U.S. and North Korean specialists began preliminary work that day in North Korea to prepare to recover the remains of Americans missing in action from the Korean War.

For the first time since these operations began in 1996, supplies and equipment were transported across the demilitarized zone to U.S. recovery teams. This arrangement was made through negotiations led by the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office in February. Also, for the first time since 1999, U.S. remains will be returned across the demilitarized zone at the end of each operation accompanied by recovery team members.

In late 2003, U.S. and North Korean negotiators scheduled five operations for 2004 in Unsan County and near the Chosin Reservoir, both sites of major battles and heavy losses of U.S. servicemen.

This marks the ninth consecutive year that U.S. teams have operated inside North Korea, bringing home the remains of more than 8,100 soldiers missing in action from the Korean War. Specialists from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command have recovered more than 180 remains since 1996 in 27 separate operations.

This year, the recovery work will be split between the two sites for a schedule that will extend from April to October. Twenty-eight U.S. team members will join their North Korean counterparts for each of these approximately 30-day operations.

More than 88,000 Americans are still considered missing in action from World War II, the Korean War, the Cold War, the Vietnam War and Operation Desert Storm.

The Department of Defense also announced April 12 that the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office hosted a historic meeting last week at the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Md., between key Russian and U.S. archivists examining the issue of American POWs and MIAs.

In 2003, Jerry D. Jennings, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs, invited the Russians to discuss technical areas important to the effort to locate material in the Russian archives about unaccounted-for American servicemen.

The three-day conference began last Tuesday and featured presentations by Jennings and by the archivist of the United States, John W. Carlin. Additionally, NARA experts in the preservation, handling, storage and release of historical materials conferred with their Russian counterparts.

A delegation of 10 Russians attended, including chief of archival services of the general staff, Col. Sergei A. Ilyenkov, and Col. Vladimir V. Kozin of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Other Russian attendees represented the Ministry of Defense, the Central Archives of the Navy, the Military Medical Museum and Archives and the Archives of the Border Guards. U.S. archivists representing governmental and private collections were also in attendance.

The conference examined issues of declassification of military and political documents, technical aids to improve the operation of a modern archive, Korean and Vietnam War documents held in Russian archives, and other issues of importance to the American effort to account for missing U.S. service members.

A small team of U.S. POW/MIA specialists presently working full-time in Moscow recovers documents from Russian archives and conducts other research across the country to clarify the fate of Americans still missing from several conflicts including World War II, the Korean and Cold Wars and the Vietnam War.

Additional information about the archival conference may be found under "upcoming events" on the DPMO Web site at www.dtic.mil/dpmo

George W. Reilly can be reached at VeteransColumn [at] aol.com or by writing to the Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St., Providence, RI 02902

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