October 2002
Summary of news for the entire month.
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October 29, 2002 SEA - NLF Update Line
Family Update
October 28, 2002 KW - CW - Korean War Remains Recovered
Remains believed to be those of 11 American soldiers missing in action from the Korean War will be repatriated Tuesday in North Korea.
October 27, 2002 KW - CW - Sign & Flag Banned
A judge has approved a $6,000 settlement for a local man involved in a dispute with the town over a sign in his front yard honoring a man killed in the Korean War.
October 26, 2002 - NAF Bits 'N' Pieces
Summary of News
October 24, 2002 - Flag Raising
It's been more than a year since SSG Jerry Bridges was laid to rest beside his mother at Giles Memory Garden, almost 34 years after his death.
October 23, 2002 SEA - Vietnam Remains Identified
The remains of Army Capt. Larry F. Lucas of Marmet, W.Va., a U.S. soldier previously unaccounted-for from the war in Vietnam, have been identified and are being returned to his family for burial with military honors.
October 22, 2002 NAF Bits 'N' Pieces
Summary of News
October 21, 2002 Civil War - Rebel Flag Case Hits Snag
The Supreme Court refused Tuesday to settle a free-speech skirmish over the Confederate battle flag, which the federal government all but bans from national cemeteries out of worry that it is racially divisive.
October 20, 2002 SEA - '65 MIA Case May Hold Clues
While international attention this week focused on Japanese abducted by North Korea 20 years ago, a backstage mystery involving a U.S. serviceman is waiting to unfold. The name Sgt. Charles Robert Jenkins returned to the publicıs attention this week when his Japanese wife, Hitomi Soga, arrived in Japan for the first time in more than two decades. She and her mother, Miyoshi, were snatched by North Korean spies 24 years ago from Sado Island in the Sea of Japan off Niigata Prefecture.
October 19, 2002 PGW - House Passes Speicher Bill
The House on Tuesday passed the so-called "Speicher Bill," which would grant asylum to Middle Easterners who return any living U.S. prisoner of war from Desert Storm.
October 18, 2002 US - 4 Airmen Missing
Military and civilian ships continued searching into the night Friday for any sign of four Navy aviators missing after two FA-18F Super Hornets crashed into the vast Pacific Ocean 80 miles southwest of Monterey, Calif.
October 17, 2002 PGW - Save a POW, Get Asylum
Congress is promising refugee status to any Iraqi who delivers to the United States a living American prisoner of war from the Persian Gulf War or any future conflict with the Iraqi government.
October 16, 2002 SEA - NLF Update Line
Family Update
October 15, 2002 PGW - Pentagon Continues to Receive Intel
The Pentagon on Friday reclassified the status of a Navy pilot whose F/A-18 fighter jet disappeared during the Persian Gulf War as "missing/captured," concluding that he ejected from his plane over Iraq and was likely taken captive.
October 13, 2002 PGW - Speicher Status Change to Missing/Captured
The Navy has changed the status of Gulf War pilot Michael Scott Speicher from missing in action to missing-captured, Sen. Pat Roberts said Friday. A defense official confirmed that Navy Secretary Gordon England had approved the change in status, which had been in the works for months.
October 12, 2002 WW II - Team Returns From China with Remains
A 14-man search and recovery team out of the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory returned to Hawaii late last week with what is believed to be the remains of four American service members whose C-46 transport plane crashed in the Tibetan Himalayas of China in March 1944.
October 11, 2002 KW - CW - DoD News Release
Talks between the United States and North Korea on issues related to accounting for MIA American soldiers ended yesterday in Bangkok. Led by Jerry D. Jennings, deputy assistant secretary of defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs, the one-day session laid out the U.S. vision for improving U.S. remains recovery operations inside North Korea, as well as facilitating live sighting investigations.
October 10, 2002 KW - CW - Pentagon Presses NK For Access to Americans
A senior Pentagon official pressed the North Korean military for access to four Americans who defected from the U.S. Army in the 1960s and are living in the communist nation's capital.
October 10, 2002 SEA - Family Hopes to Bring Him Home
Thirty years after the helicopter of Army Capt. Arnold Holm of Waterford smashed into the jungles of Vietnam, pressure is mounting to find and bring home his remains.
October 09, 2002 KW - CW - Families Sought
Daviess County Coroner Bob Howe typically investigates unusual deaths, but two of the cases on his desk this week represent a 50-year-old mystery halfway around the globe. Howe, a Korean War veteran, is hoping to contact the relatives of two Daviess County men who were killed in action in Korea during the war between 1950 and 1953. The remains of the two soldiers -- Sgt. William E. "Gene" Brashear and Sgt. Homer Marvin McDaniel -- have never been found, but Howe hopes to notify the relatives about a national effort to create a DNA database in the event remains are located in Korea, Howe said.
October 08, 2002 Ceremony Honors Those Still Missing
The words "You Are Not Forgotten" adorned the black flag, in memory of soldiers left behind.
October 08, 2002 WW II - Retracing the Footsteps
Her father's experiences in the war are what brought Kirstina and her family to North Iowa nearly 60 years later. Kirstina's father was a soldier in the German Army, and was captured by the American Army. He was sent to the Algona prisoner of war camp system, which held thousands of prisoners in Algona and 35 other satellite camps around North Iowa and southern Minnesota. After the war ended, Kirstina's father was loaded onto a troop transport for the return trip to Europe, but along the way the prisoners were stopped at England and spent two more years in prison. He returned in 1948.
October 08, 2002 WW II - Retelling the Stories
Go to a reunion and chances are the conversation will center around old friends, frat parties, ballgames and, dare we say it, our children. The men of Oflag 64 talk about commandants, lentil soup and prison breaks. Oflag 64 isn't a new IBM product. The word comes from the German phrase offizier lager, which translates roughly into "a POW camp for officers."
October 07, 2002 WW II - Memories Draw Vets, Ex-POWs
"I was taken prisoner in North Africa near Tunis. I was shot down. I was taken prisoner in a transient camp for three months in Italy and six months in a permanent camp on the Adriatic side."
October 06, 2002 WW II - Members Sought
October 05, 2002 Civil War - Andersonville
Barton, known as the "Angel of the Battlefield" because of her selfless assistance to wounded Union soldiers on the battlefield, was later known as founder of the American Red Cross. But she was instrumental in helping mark the graves of 12,912 U.S. soldiers in July 1865 who died during the Civil War here.
October 04, 2002 WW II - A Bridge Too Far
Known as Operation Market Garden, the attack involved British paratroopers from the 1st Airborne Division. It was designed to take the German-held Neder Rijn bridge. But the storming of the steel bridge in a bid to make a vital breakthrough ran into trouble when the Allies met opposition from crack German troops. Thousands of men were killed, wounded or taken prisoner.
October 03, 2002 NAF Bits 'N' Pieces
Summary of News
October 02, 2002 SEA - NLF Update Line
Family Update
October 01, 2002 WW II - Remains Found in Tibet
Lost to their country and their families, they lay on a lonely Himalayan mountainside for six decades - enough time for their war to end and others to begin, for children to grow and have their own children, for the enemy they were fighting to become a friend.
POW-MIA Issue Update November 2002