Soldier's dog tag finds way home
By William Cole
Ray Rapoza doesn't remember losing a dog tag in Vietnam when he was there in 1969.
Then again, he's not sure what happened to the tags, which were issued when he was a Hawai'i National Guard soldier and part of a call-up to active duty in 1968.
But there it had arrived in the mail, a bit rusty on one side, with the right information stamped into it.
"My name, everything's there. Army serial number, blood type," said Rapoza, 80, of Pearl City.
A Minnesota man named Chuck Peterson sent a letter saying that when he was on a business trip to Hanoi, he came across 270 U.S. dog tags. He has since been on a mission to return them to their owners. Rapoza was No. 19.
Making fake dog tags to sell to American tourists has long been a cottage industry in Vietnam. But there are apparently real dog tags by the hundreds that somehow get into the hands of Vietnamese.
The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command at Hickam Air Force Base, which recovers and identifies the remains of missing Americans from past wars, has its own "dog tag project."
According to the unit's Web site, in 1994 a tourist in Hue City bought more than 1,400 dog tags believing they were from Americans listed as missing in action.
An additional 199 dog tags were acquired in Vietnam in 2006 by a former New Zealand member of Parliament.
"A check of the dog tags revealed that although none appear to be those of an MIA, most are genuine and were worn by Americans during the war," JPAC said on the site.
The names are listed with the hope of reuniting the tags with their owner.
Rapoza was a signal officer with the 196th Infantry Brigade in the area of Da Nang. He doesn't remember losing a dog tag, but he does remember being treated as an outcast when he returned home from an unpopular war.
Forty years later, he appreciates the Minnesota man's efforts to say thanks by returning the tags.
"This guy is doing something from the bottom of his heart," Rapoza said. "He's doing a good deed and trying to reach these people."
©2009 The Honolulu Advertiser