September 1999
Summary of news for the entire month.
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01 SEP 99: 2,054 Americans remain 'officially' unaccounted-for from the Vietnam War: ARMY: 651 (VN-9, VS-497; LA-110; CB-35); NAVY: 417 (VN-286, VS-92; LA-28; CB-3; CH/OW-8); USMC: 263 (VN-24, VS-203; LA-22; CB-14); USAF: 683 (VN-233; VS-165; LA-268; CB-17); and COAST GUARD: 1 (VS-1). 39 civilians remain unaccounted-for from the Vietnam War: VN-22, LA-12, and CB-5. 529 Americans have been accounted-for post 1973: VN-391, LA-129, CB-7, and CH-2. 160 Americans have been accounted-for during the present administration: VN-88, LA-66, and CB-6. Persian Gulf War - unsatisfactory accounting. Korean War - 8,139 remain unaccounted-for, 42 possible remains returned, 4 identifications. World War II - Over 78,000 remain unaccounted-for.
02 SEP 99: Like a modern-day Sisyphus, John T. Morrissey has been climbing mountains for 19 years, carefully planting a POW/MIA and American flag on top of each. Morrissey, 57, is a Vietnam veteran who has been trying for almost two decades to get the U.S. government to name a mountain POW/MIA to honor all of Americas military prisoners of war and those listed as missing in action from Americas Revolutionary War in 1776 to the latest military efforts in Serbia and Bosnia, as well as from any from future conflicts. He efforts have been successful. Gov. Tony Knowles, also a Vietnam veteran, had just issued a press release saying the Alaska Historical Commission had voted to officially designate the 4,325-foot peak as Mount POW/MIA. The naming of Mt. POW/MIA is a fitting tribute to those who served our nation and were forced into prison camps or who, even today, remain unaccounted for, Knowles said. We can never forget them and this peak will be a permanent reminder of their service, their commitment, and their sacrifice. The proposal and the records of the commissions actions will now be forwarded to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names where it will be reviewed and considered to be an officially recognized name in the United States. Mount POW/MIA is located approximately 6 miles southeast of Wasilla, at 61 degrees 27 minutes north latitude and 149 degrees 12 minutes west longitude.
04 SEP 99: Researchers from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam visited U. S. archives last week in an effort to gather information on their casualties from the Vietnam War. This is a continuation of an effort begun in 1994 when the U. S. returned captured Vietnamese documents to their government, and began providing support to American veterans service organizations in their "vet-to-vet" initiatives. These veteran-to-veteran contacts have led to the exchange of documents and information by soldiers on both sides. The researchers were invited by Robert L. Jones, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs. Jones' archival research staff discovered some U. S. Army burial records during their work in the National Archives facility at College Park, MD. The records appeared to shed some light on the fate of North Vietnamese soldiers who were casualties during combat with U. S. forces. The Vietnamese government cooperates with our teams in Hanoi in seeking the fullest possible accounting of America's MIA, said Jones. "When we discovered these records, it was clear that they may be of great use to our Vietnamese counterparts."
06 SEP 99: When it comes to Vietnam, trade and economic issues are important, but U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made it clear Monday that accounting for American MIAs is still the top priority. Albright, making a two-day stopover en route to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in New Zealand, began her news conference in Hanoi by expressing gratitude for Vietnamese cooperation in tracking down and recovering the remains of former U.S. soldiers. She witnessed a repatriation ceremony for four sets of remains that were uncovered during the most recent of the five joint U.S.-Vietnam digs that are held each year. "This issue remains paramount to the United States," Albright said. Cooperation on the MIA issue is one of the bright spots in the relationship between Washington and Hanoi that has developed since normalization of relations began in 1995, 20 years after the end of the Vietnam war. In addition to excavating suspected plane crash or battle sites, U.S. officials have been providing their Vietnamese counterparts with access to U.S. military records to help track down the remains of the estimated 200,000 Vietnamese MIAs. She then flew to southern Ho Chi Minh City where she commissioned a new U.S. consulate in the former Saigon, nearly a quarter century after a dramatic airlift from Washington's old embassy here marked the end of the decade-long conflict. "The United States and Vietnam will forever be linked by history," Albright said when commissioning the consulate. U.S. and Vietnamese negotiators have hammered out final details of a market-opening pact that would tear down trade barriers between the former enemies, and are awaiting Hanoi's approval, Clinton administration officials said Friday. The trade package was revised this week by negotiators in Washington and has been sent to Hanoi for review by the communist-run government, a State Department source said. "Both sides are considering the text and are in the finalization process," said a spokeswoman for U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky. The pact, which took three years to negotiate, would reduce tariffs on goods and services, protect intellectual property and improve investment relations between the two countries, combatants in the Vietnam War, which ended in 1975.
07 SEP 99: U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stressed the importance of reconciliation as she wrapped up a visit to former foe Vietnam on Tuesday that provided stark reminders of a bloody past. Albright attended a somber ceremony in Hanoi early on Tuesday to repatriate the remains of four American military personnel killed during the Vietnam War. Amid steamy morning heat, Albright paid her own tribute to fallen U.S. soldiers at Hanoi's Noi Bai airport. She joined an honor guard that stood stiffly at attention while U.S. military personnel slowly carried four body-length aluminum caskets onto a C-17 transport plane. Albright made clear that Washington placed a high priority on accounting for the 2,054 American servicemen and civilians still listed as missing. But she also praised Hanoi for helping account for the MIAs, saying such efforts had facilitated deeper diplomatic, political and economic ties with the United States. "Our thoughts are with all those families, American and Vietnamese, who for too many years have borne the burden of that tragic war," Albright said in a speech on the airport tarmac. PBS aired an impressive biography on U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Pete Peterson. Also shown in this profile was VVAs Veterans Initiative Delegation participating in a repatriation ceremony at Noi Bai Airport and segments of the Vietnam Challenge which included members of VVA in a Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City bike ride.
08 SEP 99: Remains believed to be those of four unaccounted-for U.S. servicemen from the war in Southeast Asia are scheduled to arrive at Hickam Air Force Base today. The remains were recovered by a team of 111 mostly Hawaii-based military and civilian specialists who were deployed to Vietnam in July and August. Forty-five cases involving aircraft and ground losses were investigated during the 45-day operation, and nine sites were excavated. The remains will be flown from Hanoi to Andersen AFB, Guam, where a repatriation ceremony will be held to signify their return to U.S. soil. Upon arriving at Hickam, the remains will go to the U.S. Army's Central Identification Laboratory-Hawaii for forensic identification analysis. In what appeared to be new efforts at reconciliation, Jordan's King Abdullah ended his two-day visit to Kuwait on Tuesday with a pledge to try to help the nation recover 600 prisoners of war it believes are being held in Iraq. In his departure cable to the nation's emir, Sheik Jaber Al Ahmed Al Sabah, Abdullah pledged to support Kuwait in its efforts to "bring a positive end" to the war prisoner issue. Baghdad denies it is detaining anyone from the war.
09 SEP 99: Four senior Vietnamese government researchers spent a week here recently gathering information that might help them find the remains of up to 400,000 of their missing countrymen. The team returned to Hanoi with more than 390,000 Marine Corps images from the war on 42 CD-ROMs as well as hundreds of copies of documents from the National Archives facility in College Park, MD. "We hope to provide them with more than 700,000 images from other archival holdings by the end of this year," Jones said. "They were extremely pleased with the success of their mission and overwhelmed by the amount of material we gave them access to." Over the years, the United States has provided the Vietnamese access to more than 3 million pages of documents to help them locate and recover their missing servicemen, he noted. When Jones visited Hanoi last November, the Vietnamese told him the documents helped them recover remains of about 1,000 missing personnel.
11 SEP 99: A Defense Science Board task force concluded its study to determine the feasibility of using mitochondrial deoxyribonucleic acid (mtDNA) technology to identify war remains. The results of this board support the use of mtDNA as an identification tool. Mitochondrial DNA testing requires a reference blood sample from the individual's maternal line such as the mother, brother, sister, mother's sister or brother, or the mother's sister's children. The Army Repatriation and Family Affairs Division can advise you whether your DNA sample would be useful based upon your relationship to the unaccounted for servicemember. If you are interested and eligible to provide a blood reference sample, a kit with detailed instruction can be mailed to you. For more information, contact LTC Salak at the Army Repatriation and Family Affairs Division at 1-800-892-2490.
12 SEP 99: About 500 former prisoners of war in the United States will file a "'slavery"' damages lawsuit in New York against Japanese companies over wartime forced labor, a San Francisco-based civic group said Thursday. The Alliance for Preserving the Truth of the Sino-Japanese War said the suit will be filed with the federal district court in New York by plaintiffs including former U.S. soldiers and Chinese and Korean people forcibly brought to Japan for unpaid work during World War II. The group said the suit will be filed against "a long list of Japanese conglomerates for enslaving American military and civilian prisoners of war in the 1940s."
13 SEP 99: The disinterment of the remains of two Korean War servicemen previously classified as "unknown" begins in Hawaii at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, commonly known as the Punch Bowl. United States Pacific Command will conduct a Joint Services Disinterment Ceremony to honor the deceased servicemen. The ceremony will include a joint color guard and two joint Service casket bearer teams. The Department of Defense announced in May a policy to apply mitochondrial DNA technology to identify Korean War and World War II remains previously classified as "unknown" and interred in national cemeteries. "In applying the latest technology available to us, we hope to provide answers to family members who lost loved ones during the war -- some nearly 50 years ago," said Robert L. Jones, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs. "Our work in identifying the Vietnam Unknown from the Tomb of the Unknowns led us naturally to this work in the Punch Bowl cemetery," he added.
15 SEP 99: President Fidel Castro has poured scorn on claims in U.S. media that one of his senior officials led a small Cuban security unit responsible for torturing American soldiers captured in the Vietnam War. In comments shown on state television, Castro mocked the accusation against Higher Education Minister Fernando Vecino Alegret as a ridiculous lie, saying he had never even set foot in Vietnam. The allegations of Cuban involvement in the torture of U.S. servicemen in Vietnam more than three decades ago surfaced recently in U.S. daily, The Miami Herald, and its Spanish- language sister newspaper, El Nuevo Herald. The dailies, known for their opposition to Castro, have quoted former U.S. troops to allege Havana sent up to four security agents to run an interrogation unit responsible for torturing 19 Americans between August 1967 and August 1968. One died of his injuries, the Herald said. The reports cited a survivor, retired air force Col. Ed Hubbard, as identifying Alegret as the leader of the alleged torturers whom the prisoners nicknamed "Fidel."
16 SEP 99: The American soldiers, hearts pounding, hands behind heads, dropped to their knees. The Serb captors placed guns to the back of the prisoners' heads. Staff Sgt. Christopher Stone wondered if he would be executed. Spc. Steven M. Gonzales thought, "Am I going to see one of my friends get shot in the head?" In the ensuing week, the POWs, hooded, handcuffed and legs bound, endured beatings, interrogations and death threats as NATOs air war against Yugoslavia raged overhead. After 32 days of isolation, they were released in May and welcomed home as heroes. They said the experience changed their priorities, turning soldiers who recently had re-enlisted into men intent on quitting the Army, getting a college education and rebuilding their lives, they said in an interview this week with The Associated Press, marking their first extensive public comments about their captivity and future plans.
17 SEP 99: Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Henry H. Shelton and Sen. Max Cleland will speak at a national POW/MIA Recognition Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. Attendees at the ceremony will include former POWs, veterans, servicemembers, and family members of missing in action servicemen. POW/MIA Recognition Day is traditionally held on the third Friday in September. On that day, many states, communities, family organizations, and veterans organizations commemorate POW/MIA Recognition Day in local ceremonies. The commemoration at Arlington National Cemetery will include formal military honors with assembled troops from all of the military Services and two joint Service flyovers, one with helicopters and one with jet aircraft. As the Department of Defense announced June 17, part of the Sept. 17 ceremony will include the formal dedication of a new inscription above the existing dates (1958-1975) on the tomb cover of the Vietnam Unknown in the Tomb of the Unknowns: "Honoring and Keeping Faith with America's Missing Servicemen."
NATIONAL POW/MIA RECOGNITION DAY 1999
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION
As we look back over this century that is swiftly drawing to a close, we recognize that the light of freedom still burns brightly in our worlds today because of the service and sacrifice of America's men and women in uniform. Through the devastation of two world wars and the brutality of numerous regional conflicts; on peacekeeping assignments and humanitarian missions; from the darkest days of the Cold War to the fall of the Berlin Wall, our Nation's servicemen and women have fought the forces of tyranny and won signal victories for liberty, human dignity, and the ideals of democracy. On every continent, on the seas, and in the air, gallant young Americans have paid for our future with their own, and many have preserved our freedom by sacrificing their own.
On National POW/MIA Recognition Day, we remember with profound gratitude those who suffered captivity and those whose fate remains unknown. Many American POWs were tortured at the hands of their captors; all experienced the ordeal of being held against their will and the anguish of indefinite separation from their families and their homeland.
Today we also honor the valiant families of our fellow citizens who remain missing - - - families who have had to suffer not only the absence of their loved ones, but also the uncertainty of their fate. As Americans, we remain unshakable in our resolve to achieve the fullest possible accounting of those missing and to strive to bring home the remains of those who have died. Only by doing so can we begin to acknowledge the debt we owe to these patriots and assuage the grief of the families they left behind for the sake of our Nation.
On September 17, 1999, the flag of the National League of Families of American Prisoners of War and Missing in Southeast Asia, a black and white banner symbolizing America's missing and our unwavering determination to account for them, will be flown over the White House, the U.S. Capitol, the Departments of State, Defense, and Veterans Affairs, the Selective Service System Headquarters, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Korean War Veterans Memorial, national cemeteries, and other locations across our country.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, WILLIAM J. CLINTON, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim September 17, 1999, as National POW/MIA Recognition Day. I ask all Americans to join me in honoring former American prisoners of war and those whose fate is still undetermined. I also encourage the American people to remember with compassion and concern the courageous families who persevere in their quest to know the fate of their missing loved ones. Finally, I urge Federal, State, and local officials and private organizations to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies, programs, and activities.
IN WITNESS WHERE OF, I have hereunto set my hand this fifteenth day of September in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety-nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-fourth.
WILLIAM J. CLINTON
18 SEP 99: A team of 98 U.S. military specialists left for Vietnam with hopes of recovering remains that may lead to the identification of American servicemen listed as missing in action in the Vietnam War, the U.S. Department of Defense said in a news release. The team will join Vietnamese counterparts to begin joint investigations and recovery operations in 23 provinces and cities during the 30-day operation, the statement said. Six primary excavation sites and three alternate locations will be targeted in the 42nd joint MIA operation conducted in Vietnam since the U.S. Joint Task Force-Full Accounting was established in 1992.
21 SEP 99: British World War II veterans urged the government to give 10,000 former prisoners of war held by the Japanese a special one-off payment to repay a debt of honor before they all die.
The British Legion veterans association, which has campaigned in vain through the Japanese courts for reparations for ill-treatment suffered during the war, said they had won both parliamentary and public support for their campaign. "Some 25 percent of FEPOWs (Far East prisoners of war) held by the Japanese were killed or died in captivity," said Legion Secretary General Ian Townsend. The survivors, many of whom are disabled both physically and psychologically, have fought for justice through the Japanese courts since the 1960s. "Because this route has so far been unsuccessful, we are now seeking to break the stalemate by asking the government to make an ex-gratia payment in recognition of hardship and brutality they suffered in the service of their country."
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Bob Jones departs for Beijing to continue discussions there on U. S. servicemen missing in action from the Korean War. Jones had previously presented 44 case inquiries to the Chinese. He requested information relating to Americans, drawing from categories: Korean War POW camps; ground battles (Chosin Reservoir, Chongchon River, Demilitarized Zone); air losses; and POW names appearing in Chinese periodicals. While in China he will travel to Mao'er mountain in the south and receive briefings on the joint U.S.-China operation to recover the remains of WWII American airmen whose B-24 crashed in 1944.
24 SEP 99: The Japanese government is not responsible for compensating a group of Chinese who claim to be the victims of Japanese atrocities during World War II, a Tokyo court ruled Wednesday. Japan inflicted tremendous harm on the Chinese people during the war, but the court does not acknowledge the right of a foreign individual to seek compensation for war damages from Japan, Even so, many victims of Japanese wartime aggression have taken legal action to demand redress. And the biological experiments and Rape of Nanking, in particular, continue to be the source of a very emotional debate in Japan. The Japanese government has acknowledged that during the war its Unit 731, based in the Chinese city of Harbin, conducted experiments with bubonic plague, anthrax and cholera on thousands of Allied prisoners of war and Chinese civilians. But the unit's leaders were spared prosecution as war criminals in exchange for information on the results of their experiments, and Tokyo has insisted there was insufficient evidence to determine the extent of the unit's activities because all documents were destroyed at the end of the war. U.S. officials in China are taking possession of two sets of human remains believed to be crew members of an American bomber that crashed in southern China during World War II. The remains were to be turned over at a repatriation ceremony today in the city of Guilin and then flown to Hawaii for examination by the Army's Central Identification Laboratory. The two sets of remains were found this summer during an unpublicized joint U.S.-China recovery operation in a rugged ravine on Mao'er Mountain in Guangxi province. U.S. and Chinese officials have made multiple trips to the site since recovering bone fragments there in January 1997. All 10 airmen died when their B-24 bomber crashed during a return flight to Guangxi after bombing Japanese ships near Taiwan on Aug. 31, 1944. Forensic scientists believe they now have most, if not all, of the 10 sets of remains and are "very close" to positive identifications of most of them.
26 SEP 99: Iran freed 276 Iraqi prisoners of war, Iran's official news agency reported. The prisoners were captured during Iran's 1980-88 war with Iraq, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported. They were released to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Iran's late revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, said the agency, which was monitored in Dubai. The move comes as the two countries continue to disagree about how many of the other's prisoners each is holding. A spokesman for Iran's POW commission said Iran has freed 55,000 Iraqis since the war's end and that 972 remain in custody. He said 2,806 Iranians are still held in Iraqi prisons. But Iraq says it has no more Iranian prisoners. It maintains that Iran holds 16,000 Iraqi POWs.
27 SEP 99: Three DPMO personnel conducted archival research on Korean War/Cold War cases at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis last week. They copied approximately 3,000 documents associated with numerous loss incidents. The researchers copied over 400 Report of Death Memoranda on U.S. Army personnel who were killed-in-action or who died while POWs and whose remains have not yet been recovered. These documents summarize eyewitness and hearsay accounts of the deaths of specific individuals and also include other information (name mentioned in communist propaganda broadcasts or included on communist-generated POW lists). To date, DPMO personnel have copied over 1,100 Report of Death Memoranda related to U.S. Army personnel. Researchers located and copied a list of burial sites of victims of the Sunchon Massacre. Their remains were interred at the UN Cemetery in Pyongyang, North Korea. Also found was a repatriated U.S. POW's list of other POWs encountered while incarcerated in North Korea. DPMO personnel will analyze the list to clarify the fates of those missing personnel whose names are listed.
29 SEP 99: Preparations are underway for the Sixteenth Plenary Meeting of the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs, scheduled to be held in Moscow during the first part of November, 1999. Working groups are in the process of developing agenda topics for presentation at the first plenum at which Major General Roland Lajoie will co-officiate since his appointment as U.S. Chairman last December. Early indications are that Russian counterparts are receptive to U.S. proposals and have already begun the process of contacting specific individuals for interviews with commission members and staff.
30 SEP 99: REMINDER - DOD/DPMO Family Update - October 16 1999 - Birmingham, AL.
POW-MIA Issue Update October 1999