December 2003
Summary of news for the entire month.
For recent and daily news, please go to: InterNetwork
December 31, 2003 WW II Eternal Memory
December 31, 2003 In Mourning - No Updates/Postings Until Janury 10th, 2003
December 28, 2003 POW-MIA Freedom Radio Broadcast
News and Views :: Mr. Lloyd Pate :: CSM Michael N. Martin, USA (ret)
December 26, 2003 KW - CW Long-Term POW Reunited with Family
Jun Yong-il, a South Korean soldier who returned home this week after being held in North Korea for 50 years, still had a big brother's swagger when finally reunited with his sister Friday.
December 25, 2003 KW - CW Long-Term POW Returns after 50 Years
A former South Korean prisoner of war, who escaped from North Korea to China in June, arrived in Seoul yesterday, 40 days after Chinese authorities detained him for using a fake passport in a bid to seek asylum in South Korea.
December 21, 2003 KW - CW Ex-POW's Ordeal to End Shortly
Half a century after he was taken prisoner by North Koreans during the Korean War, Jeon Yong-il, a former South Korean army private now under detention in China sees his Odyssey coming to a happy end.
December 21, 2003 POW-MIA Freedom Radio Broadcast
News and Views :: Mr Bob Dumas :: Mr. Steve Robinson
December 20, 2003 SEA Lima Site 85
He was team leader of 17 military and Department of Defense and Central Identification Laboratory civilians as well as three mountaineers who conducted an extensive search of a mountain in northern Laos. They were looking for remains of 11 U.S. air force personnel who staffed a radar station on the summit of Pha Thi Mountain.
December 20, 2003 PGW - IRAQ ICRC Seeks Access to Saddam
The International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) is awaiting official notification from Washington to visit captured Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
December 20, 2003 PGW - IRAQ Saddam Capture Revives Hopes for Speicher
The capture of Saddam Hussein has revived hopes that the US military might finally be able to determine what happened to Captain Michael Scott Speicher, a navy pilot who went missing during the first Gulf War.
December 19, 2003 Speicher Update - West Defense
One of the first questions put to Saddam was whether he had any information on the fate of U.S. Navy pilot Capt. Michael Scott Speicher. The initial answer from the dictator was that he knew nothing about the missing pilot, whose F-18 was shot down over Iraq on the first night of the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
December 19, 2003 WW II Great Escape Tunnel Found
A TEAM of snowboarding geophysicists have found the tunnel 67 German soldiers dug to escape from their prison camp in Bridgend in March 1945.
December 19, 2003 SEA MIAs ID'd and Returned
Remains of an Air Force officer from Salisbury, Md., who was missing in action from the Vietnam War, have been identified and returned to his family for burial, the Defense Department said yesterday.
December 19, 2003 IRAQ Johnson Big Apple Guest for New Year's Celebration
This year's special guest for the Times Square countdown to 2004 will be Shoshana Johnson, who spent 22 days as a prisoner of war in Iraq after being shot during an ambush.
December 19, 2003 SEA DoD News Release
Two airmen missing in action from the Vietnam War have been identified and returned to their families for burial. They are Maj. Richard W. Cooper, Jr., of Salisbury, Md.; and Chief Master Sgt. Charlie S. Poole, of Gibsland, La.
December 18, 2003 WW II Mia for 3 Years, Actually a Guerilla Fighter
Davenport native Robert Lapham, who led an army of Filipino guerrillas for three years during World War II and emerged from the jungles of Luzon island a storied national hero, died Thursday at his home in Sun City, Ariz.
December 18, 2003 IRAQ POWs Were Focus of Spotlight
The attention lavished on soldiers who returned to the United States after having been POWs in Iraq isn't lost on older veterans who arrived home decades ago virtually unnoticed.
December 18, 2003 IRAQ Lynch Homecomning Cost Locals US$48,000.00
The state spent more than $48,000 on the July homecoming of former prisoner of war Pfc. Jessica Lynch, including more than $7,800 to provide security for the event.
December 17, 2003 Lance P. Sijan Leadership Award
Four airmen are being recognized with the service's 2003 Lance P. Sijan Air Force Leadership Award. The Sijan award annually recognizes senior and junior officer and enlisted airmen who demonstrate outstanding leadership abilities while assigned to organizations at the wing level or below.
December 16, 2003 PGW - IRAQ Where is Michael Scott Speicher?
As a bedraggled Saddam Hussein faced his first session with interrogators Sunday, mixed in with questions about weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaida was a query about an American pilot who vanished almost 13 years ago.
December 16, 2003 IRAQ Ex PGW POW Ponders Saddam's Capture
An Operation Desert Storm veteran who spent 15 days as a prisoner of Saddam Hussein said he is delighted that Saddam himself is now behind bars.
December 16, 2003 IRAQ ICRC
The international Red Cross said Monday that it considers Saddam Hussein a prisoner of war and wants U.S. authorities to allow it to visit the ousted Iraqi leader to check the conditions in which he is being held.
December 15, 2003 Society of the Honor Guard, Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
December 15, 2003 IRAQ Iran Holds US Responsible for Missing Guards
A top military official said in Tehran on Sunday that US troops in Iraq are responsible for the fate of four Iranian border guards abducted by the terrorist Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO), IRNA reported.
December 15, 2003 IRAQ-PGW More on Status
December 15, 2003 IRAQ-PGW Hussein to Get POW Protection
Saddam Hussein will have protections accorded to prisoners of war as U.S. officials try to press him for information on the attacks on coalition forces, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld says.
December 15, 2003 IRAQ-PGW Saddam Denies Speicher Knowledge
Saddam Hussein says he doesn't know anything about the whereabouts of Captain Scott Speicher, according to Time Magazine.
December 15, 2003 IRAQ-PGW Saddam & Speicher
Yes, it is a great, great day. The Capture of Saddam is a Big Day for us all.
December 14, 2003 POW-MIA Freedom Radio
News and Views :: Mr. Jerry Mooney :: Mr. Galen Kittleson
December 14, 2003 IRAQ Saddam Hussein Captured
Without firing a shot, American forces captured a bearded and haggard-looking Saddam Hussein in a dirt cellar under a farmhouse near his hometown of Tikrit, ending one of the most intensive manhunts in history.
December 14, 2003 WW II Life In a POW Camp
Harold Bennett, a World War II veteran and former German prisoner of war, looks through photographs recently in his Kentwood home of the Austrian camp where he was held hostage for 16 months.
December 13, 2003 WW II US POWs and Hiroshima
The U.S. government notified the families of at least three U.S. prisoners of war of their deaths in the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima to their families soon after the end of World War II, although it did not officially admit they died in the bombing until 1983, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned.
December 13, 2003 KW - CW Ex-POW Gets Decorated for Christmas
John Evans wondered if he would be dead before the next dawn broke. The U.S. Army in this part of Korea had started to withdraw in the face of massive resistance. Evans and the rest of his platoon had been left to guard an outpost at the front.
December 13, 2003 WW II Held by the Germans, Freed by the Russians
Bernard Miller remembers his fondest birthday memory on April 21, 1945. A prisoner of war in a German labor camp, it was on this birthday the Russian Red Army liberated Miller as it advanced toward Berlin.
December 12, 2003 IRAQ Soldier Listed as DUSTWUN
The Department of Defense announced today the identity of an Army soldier supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom who has been listed as Duty Status Whereabouts Unknown (DUSTWUN).
December 12, 2003 SEA Bringing the Boys Home
Harold Jernigan has been thinking about those troops while recalling the days when he helped bring prisoners of war home from Vietnam.
December 12, 2003 IRAQ Johnson Discharged
Shoshana Johnson, who spent 22 days as a prisoner of war in Iraq after being shot during an ambush, was discharged from the Army on Friday.
December 11, 2003 WW II Reliving the Stolen Years
The physical labour was endurable: it would "stimulate a mind not dead to hope ... and what I lacked in food and comfort could be made up from all that is sheer nature around me". The year was 1943 and Parkin, one of Australia's little-known wartime artists, was interned as a prisoner of war of the Japanese on the Burma-Thailand railway.
December 11, 2003 KW - CW Ministry to Intercede on Behalf of Long-term POW
The government said Wednesday it will try to bring back home "at an early date" a former South Korean prisoner of war under detention in China after fleeing North Korea. Jeon Yong-il, 72, who was taken prisoner by North Korea during the Korean War half a century ago, was arrested by Chinese authorities in October after attempting to board a Seoul-bound flight with a forged passport.
December 08, 2003 WW II Recollections of a Bataan Death March Survivor
Ted Pflueger was looking forward to a party celebrating both his promotion to first lieutenant and his 28th birthday when the San Francisco radio station he was listening to broadcast news that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.
December 08, 2003 Lightless Tree Honors the Missing
Peggy Marish-Boos had been assigned here to the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office for two years when she finally asked, "Why don't we ever have a Christmas or holiday tree?"
December 08, 2003 KW - CW - Excavation Planned
South Korea's plan to excavate Korean War-era remains could uncover nearly 90 American servicemen who are believed to have perished on the border with North Korea more than 50 years ago, a news report said.
December 08, 2003 WW II DoD News Release
A sailor missing in action from the attack on Pearl Harbor has been identified and returned to his family for burial.
December 08, 2003 WW II Bronze Star Shines for Ex-POW
He spent more than three years after that as a prisoner of war and slave laborer in Japan. Gillett will talk about horrors from that time, of nearly starving to death, of contracting dengue fever. He recounts, with a glare, how some Japanese guards killed his fellow soldiers. In the next breath, he recounts how Japanese civilians sneaked him bits of food when he worked in a steel factory.
December 08, 2003 KW - CW Plans to Search DMZ for MIA Remains
Plans to search the Demilitarized Zone for Korean War-era remains could uncover Americans who perished on the border with North Korea, officials said Friday.
December 07, 2003 PGW Bush Badministration Vs. Ex-POWs
Chief Warrant Officer Guy Hunter blacked out when the missile hit the plane, knocking the left engine off and forcing the pilot to eject them both. Hunter woke up with blood running down his face, his parachute open, falling toward the Kuwaiti desert. It was his second mission, the second day of the first Gulf War in January 1991.
December 07, 2003 POW-MIA Freedom Radio Broadcast
News and Views :: Mr. J. B. Stone :: Mr. Tim Drago
December 07, 2003 Family Update Briefing Schedule for 2004
December 06, 2003 WW II Bataan Death March Suit Settled
A four-year battle that pitted a Bataan Death March survivor against Deseret Book and a Provo novelist whom the veteran accused of plagiarizing him has ended in an out-of-court settlement.
December 06, 2003 WW II 60 Years Gone, Still Remembered
A seven-man crew left Attu Island, Alaska, on a World War II bomber plane, heading for enemy targets in the Kurile Islands of Japan. The plane hit a storm, and the crewmen were never seen or heard from again.
December 06, 2003 SWA McCain, Others, to Visit Guantanamo
Sen. John McCain and U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake will make separate visits next week to the U.S. detention center where suspected terrorists are being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
December 06, 2003 SEA NLF Update Line
Family News Update
December 05, 2003 PGW POW & MOC to Hold Press Conference
991 Gulf War POW Jeff Fox Joins Rep. Meeks to Discuss Efforts to Hold Saddam Hussein's Regime Responsible for Torture of Troops.
December 04, 2003 WW II Missing Tag Returned 60 Years Later
For 61 years, Herman H. Rosenblatt's dog tag was missing in action. Lost -- along with his youth -- in Guadalcanal, the Pacific island where 1,600 Americans died fighting the Japanese during World War II.
December 04, 2003 IRAQ Johnson Honored
December 04, 2003 KW - CW Remains & Dog Tag Mystery
It might be one of the eerier items dropped off at the U.S. military headquarters in Seoul: powdered bones and bone fragments no larger than paint chips wrapped in paper, along with a photo of a U.S. Army dog tag.
December 04, 2003 KW - CW Bob Dumas' Search for Truth
The story of Bob Dumas is one of pursuit. For the past 50 years, Bob Dumas of Canterbury has been trying to find his brother Roger. It's a story of red tape, closed doors and dead ends.
December 02, 2003 KW - CW Remains with Dog Tag Recovered by Locals
Human remains believed to be from an American serviceman killed during the Korean War were handed over yesterday to the U.S. military in Seoul by South Korean human rights groups.
December 01, 2003 SEA Korean MIA Remains Found in Vietnam
The Ministry of National Defense announced on November 30 that it launched a site investigation in Vietnam according to the report by some domestic press that the remains of a Korean soldier who was supposed to be killed during the Vietnam war was found.
POW-MIA Issue Update January 2004