Re: DPMO Briefs Families

Date: February 22, 2004

"Nearly 200 share bond at meeting

POW-MIA families gather for updates

By Rachel Uranga
Staff Writer

WOODLAND HILLS -- For four decades, no matter how happy the occasion, Jan Curran could never shake the feeling something -- someone -- was missing.

Curran's father disappeared when she was 3 while flying a support mission during the Korean War -- and she has never abandoned hope of hearing something of his fate.

That was why Curran and nearly 200 other Southland residents gathered Saturday at the Warner Center Marriott in Woodland Hills, hoping for news of missing and captured servicemen at an update by the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office.

"I don't have closure yet, but I feel like I have a chance to get it," said the 54-year-old Diamond Bar resident who has attended several of the updates. "You always come hoping that they are going to find him."

Started in 1993 by the Department of Defense, the outreach program aims to give family members information about their loved ones -- information that otherwise is often difficult to come by.

The office, with an annual $100 million budget devoted to outreach and the search for missing servicemen and their remains, holds monthly meetings across the country and an annual one in Washington, D.C. The last one to be held in Los Angeles was in 2000 and the next local meeting is not expected to occur for at least two years.

Drawing a mix of children, widows and in-laws -- some holding out hope for a return and others dogging the military for more answers -- the daylong meetings have become therapeutic for many of the family members.

"This has been a catharsis for me; I am not sure there is any other way I can describe it," said Curran, whose father's remains have yet to be recovered. "I don't think I started the grieving process until I came to this meeting."

Bess Bergmann, an 85-year-old Pomona resident wearing a yellow "Bless our Troops," ribbon attended the meeting with her second husband and son.

In 1953, a day after the Korean War ended, the 31-year-old Bergmann with three young children was informed that her 36-year-old husband's plane had been shot down. It remains unclear if he survived and was captured or perished the day he was flying reconnaissance over Siberia in a Cold War mission.

"I never came with the hope that I would find him," said Bergmann. "It's a support group and a fellowship with people who have the same sorrow."

Thousands of U.S. military personnel remain missing. About 78,000 World War II personnel are unaccounted for; 8,100 Korean personnel; 126 Cold War personnel; 1,869 Vietnam personnel; and three from the Gulf War.

But over the past two decades, thousands of POW and MIA remains have also been recovered.

Since 1985, more than 700 Vietnam military personnel remains have been identified and returned. In the past eight years, 186 Korean veterans' remains have been turned over to families while 1,000 veterans' relics have been recovered. Evidence of 300 World War II veterans has also been given to families since 1976 and in the past decade about 18 more involved in the Cold War have been identified.

For more information, the office's Web site is www.dtic.mil/dpmo/

© 2004 Los Angeles Daily News
Los Angeles Newspaper Group"