May 2002

Summary of news for the entire month.
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May 29, 2002 Memorial Day 2002 Around the Country
Anne Nicholson of Bethlehem Township, N.J., gently kissed the prisoner of war bracelet bearing the name of Jacksonville Navy pilot Scott Speicher, missing since the first night of the Persian Gulf War. "I saw his picture, and I just connected with him. He could be my brother," said Nicholson, who has been wearing the metal bracelet since the Navy changed Speicher's status from killed to missing in action last year.

May 28, 2002 SEA - NLF Update Line
Family Update

May 27, 2002 WW II - Ex-POW Remembers Java
Uell Carter, 79, considers himself lucky. Carter, a veteran of World War II, spent more than three years as a prisoner of war in Java, an island in Indonesia, and is alive to tell about it.

May 27, 2002 SEA - The Traveling Tribute
The names of the 58,226 men and women who died in the Vietnam War are inscribed on a scale replica of the famous Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The replica, which is 80 percent the size of the original, will be open to the public all weekend at Southwestern Michigan College in Dowagiac.

May 27, 2002 SEA - Bikers Hit the Highway
Riding across the country to promote healing for Vietnam veterans, their families and friends and to raise awareness about MIAs and POWs, a group of motorcyclists roared into Wytheville Wednesday afternoon. The group, which is the southern part of the Run For The Wall, started in Ontario, Calif., on May 15 on its way to Washington, D.C., to take part in Rolling Thunder XV.

May 27, 2002 SEA - Hear the Roar
"People think the MIA/POW issue is dead, but it's not," said Summerfield, who cited several instances, including the recent discovery of a MIA soldier from Desert Storm, that continue to give him hope.

May 27, 2002 SEA - Gone But Not Forgotten
They came to remember prisoners of war and soldiers missing in action during a candlelight remembrance ceremony at the village green. A common theme at the gathering was our country and its citizens should never forget the fighting men and women who got the call to serve their country, but whose whereabouts remain unknown.

May 26, 2002 WW II - Film on MacArthur's Secret POW Camp Raid
Based on a true story about Gen. Douglas MacArthur's secret raid on a POW camp to free 500 Americans facing death, the Miramax Films project is set in the Philippines in 1945. Bratt plays the leader of the mission, and Franco is the first of several prominent castings expected in the next few weeks.

May 26, 2002 SEA - Coming Home At Last
Green tarnish covers portions of the battered dog tag. Some of the letters and numbers are eaten through from being buried for 35 years in wet, acidic soil. The name remains legible: ''Cutrer, Fred.'' In 11 days, the long-missing Vietnam War fighter pilot will come home to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

May 26, 2002 WWII - Survival a Miracle for Ex-POW
Staff Sgt. Hoolko was one of six survivors of the nine-member crew of a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber, unavailingly nicknamed Methuselah, that was shot down over Germany in September 1944. Afterward, he spent nine months in a German POW camp. Hoolko remembers his lost companions. But what is always foremost in his memory is his own remarkable survival.

May 26, 2002 WWII - Death March Memories
Mel Rosen's introduction to being a prisoner of war came in the first hours after he and his troops surrendered to the Japanese in the Philippines in spring 1942. As they sat in a big field ringed by Japanese machine guns on the Bataan peninsula, a GI tried to use the latrine. A Japanese soldier thrust his bayonet through the American's chest, and when the blade did not come out cleanly, the Japanese soldier used his foot to push the dying GI into the latrine.

May 25, 2002 Memorial Day 2002

May 25, 2002 Memorial Day 2002 Presidential Proclamation
Every Memorial Day, Americans remember the debt of gratitude we owe to our veterans who gave their lives for our country. On this important day, communities across our Nation stop to remember and to honor the great sacrifices made by our men and women in uniform. Since its beginnings, our country has faced many threats that have tested its courage. From war-torn battlefields and jungle skirmishes to conflicts at sea and air attacks, generations of brave men and women have fought and died to defeat tyranny and protect our democracy. Their sacrifices have made this Nation strong and our world a better place.

May 25, 2002 Civil War - Point Lookout POW Camp and Cemetery
For many of us, the Stars and Stripes is the only flag we will ever salute or die for. However, during one of the bleakest moments in American history, the Confederate Battle Flag flew above the heads of hundreds of thousands of CSA men, women and children from the South, who were willing to die for it. And many, many did. Many died as POWs in a place called Point Lookout, Maryland. Over 52,000 were held as POWs with more than 14,000 dying in captivity. It is the ONLY veteran's cememtery in the US that exclusively has Confederate war dead, with all Union war dead disinterred and reburied in Arlington.

May 24, 2002 PGW - PRAVDA on Speicher
The Pentagon decided to give an idea to Hollywood to make another blockbuster: "Saving Lieutenant Speicher." The action takes place in Iraq. The Washington Post newspaper has recently published information about the fate of a military pilot of the US Air Force who went missing in Iraq during Gulf War. According to information from the CIA, which the newspaper referred to in the article, Lieutenant Commander Michael Speicher was shot down in an F-18 Hornet fighter over Iraq in 1991 and he is still in the Iraqi captivity. The CIA notified the US Congress about of this information on February 4th. The American special services earlier thought that Speicher had died, but the British special services gave this new information to the CIA (which they obtained from their sources in Iraq), which said that the American pilot was alive and that he was kept in one of Baghdad's jails.

May 23, 2002 SWA - 18 Special Forces Missing Story Resurfaces
The story of the missing 18 US special forces personnel in Afghanistan will not go away. As a matter of fact, it has now grown to 20 personnel unaccounted-for. However, it would appear that the story is being deliberately fed to/out of Pakistani news agencies/sources as either a red herring, disinformation, a distraction, propaganda or a trial balloon.

May 22, 2002 Run For the Wall
³Smoke² is the road name of an 84-year-old World War II veteran, one of the more than 460 motorcyclists headed for the nationıs capital in the annual Run for the Wall this month.

May 21, 2002 POW-MIA Display
The POW/MIA display includes a table, a tablecloth, an empty chair, a rose, a slice of lemon, salt, a red ribbon, a candle, and an American flag. According to the Legion service manual, each item has meaning.

May 20, 2002 Efforts to Identify War Dead
Croatia and Serbia step up efforts to share information on the fate of people who went missing during the Balkan conflict.

May 20, 2002 PGW - Kuwaiti Says Iraq Holding POWs
Undermining tentative moves towards reconciliation, Iraq has failed to determine the fate of Kuwaitis missing since Iraq's occupation of the Gulf emirate 12 years ago, a Kuwaiti official said on Sunday. Kuwait, backed by the United Nations, says Iraq is holding at least 600 people, mainly Kuwaitis, missing since Iraq invaded the small Gulf state in 1990. Iraq denies any knowledge of their whereabouts.

May 19, 2002 The Flag Lady
Austin Boulevard will take on a new look this Memorial Day. Judy Knowles, who calls herself ³Flag Lady² is well-known locally for placing American flags on veterans graves in area cemeteries. This week she will be placing American and POW/MIA flags on 60 of the utility poles along Austin Boulevard and bunting on the guard rails of the Austin overpass. Knowles said that the idea of decorating Austin Boulevard first came to her after Memorial Day last year as a way to show Nevadaıs spirit to people who are traveling through Nevada on U.S. Highway 54.

May 18, 2002 NAF Bits 'N' Pieces
Summary of News

May 17, 2002 Rolling Thunder 2002

May 16, 2002 PGW - Speicher Email Draws Flak
Family and friends of missing Jacksonville Navy pilot Scott Speicher expressed disappointment yesterday about an e-mail from a Pentagon official with the lead agency investigating the case. Adrian Cronauer, special assistant to the deputy assistant secretary of defense for POW/MIA affairs, sent the e-mail Monday to the National Alliance of Families. He was responding to a report in the prisoner of war activist group's newsletter on a meeting he had with its leaders.

May 13, 2002 PGW - Speicher - Searching For a Buddy
With hope and heartbreak they have watched as their friend's story has continued to unfold during the past decade. The fate of Jacksonville Navy pilot Michael Scott Speicher has been rehashed and debated since the night his FA-18 went down over Iraq, only to bring more questions and more concern to his high school buddies. And the quest for answers has reunited the Forrest High School Class of 1975 on behalf of one of their own.

May 12, 2002 POW-MIA Flag to Fly
IT'S A BLACK FLAG, with a silhouette of a gaunt young man, a watch tower and barbed wire in the background, and for the first time ever it will be flying over City Hall on Saturday. The POW-MIA flag honors Americans taken prisoner or missing in action, and a coalition of veterans groups convinced officials to raise the flag at City Hall on Saturday, Armed Forces Day. The flag is meant to remind residents of the sacrifices, not only by the men who were held captive or forever lost, but of families whose sons and daughters didn't return and for whom there has been no closure, said Judi Greig, a Vietnam-era veteran who spearheaded the drive.

May 09, 2002 NLF Update Line
Family Update

May 09, 2002 Navy Planes Crash - 7 Missing
Rescue crews were searching for seven people missing after a pair of U.S. Navy jets crashed in the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida Panhandle on Wednesday, Navy and Coast Guard officials said.

May 06, 2002 PGW - Free Speicher Campaign
Across the First Coast, people who knew Navy pilot Scott Speicher, or just knew of him, are organizing to pressure government leaders for information on his disappearance over Iraq 11 years ago.

May 06, 2002 WW II - Ex-POW to Receive Purple Heart
He survived three years of internment by the Japanese during World War II. He witnessed the Bataan Death March and the bombing of Nagasaki, and he has lived to be 85 years old, while most of his buddies from that era have died.

May 05, 2002 NAF Bits 'N' Pieces
Summary of News

May 02, 2002 SWA - Some Give POW Status to Afgahni Captives
British military officials told The Associated Press yesterday that they will treat most captured al-Qaeda or Taliban fighters as prisoners of war and hand them to the interim government in Kabul, rather than to U.S. forces. Washington has denied its captives PoW status, calling them "unlawful combatants."

May 01, 2002 WW II - German POWs in Southern US
The camps are an all-but-forgotten part of history, but the prisoners did leave some remnants behind in south Georgia and throughout the country. Some of them went on to become leaders of postwar Germany. Langdale's POWs came from camps at Moody Field near Valdosta and Fargo, an isolated Okefenokee Swamp town. They planted many of the azaleas at what is now Moody Air Force Base, and there still is a ``Prison Camp Road'' north of Fargo.

May 01, 2002 SEA - NLF Update Line
Family Update

POW-MIA Issue Update June 2002