July 2002

Summary of news for the entire month.
For recent and daily news, please go to: InterNetwork

July 31, 2002 SEA - Ruth Gutterson Passes
Former Vietnam POW and Air Force Col. Laird Guttersen lost his singing partner, his lecture aide, and the "woman who enhanced my life" when his wife, Ruth E. Guttersen, died Friday.

July 31, 2002 SEA - Former POW Speaks
Human potential has no limit as long as you believe you can do it and are willing to work hard enough, said a former POW who spent nearly seven years in a prison camp during the Vietnam war, only to emerge to be fluent in Spanish, a world record holder in jump roping and with the ability to do thousands of sit-ups and over 300 pushups continually, all from experiences in prison.

July 30, 2002 WW II - Great Raid, New POW Film
The film was inspired by the book The Great Raid on Cabanatuan, written by military historian William B. Breuer, which chronicles the true story of the 1945 raid on a Philippine POW camp.  During the raid, Lieutenant Colonel Henry A. Mucci (Bratt) leads a small group of volunteers thirty miles behind enemy lines in order to free 511 POWs from Cabanatuan, a notorious Japanese POW camp where thousands of American prisoners had been brutally tortured and killed. 

July 30, 2002 WW II - Ex-POW Nurse Passes
FLORENCE Syer, an Australian World War II nurse who survived 18 hours in the water after her evacuation ship was bombed and sunk, has died in Brisbane. She was 86. The former nurse, who endured the horrors of a Japanese PoW camp for three years, died on Tuesday night at Greenslopes Private Hospital, Veterans Affairs Minister Danna Vale said yesterday.

July 30, 2002 SEA - CILHI Remains Repatriation
Remains believed to be those of four American servicemen missing or unaccounted-for from the war in Southeast Asia will arrive home to American soil on July 30; two from Vietnam and two from Laos. An all-service honor guard will commemorate their arrival in a ceremony July 30, 9 a.m., Hickam Air Force Base outside the 15th Air Base Wing base operations building.

July 30, 2002 KW - CW - CILHI News Release
The U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory will return the remains of a Republic of Korea soldier to representatives of his country and his family members at a repatriation ceremony July 29, 1:30 p.m., at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

July 30, 2002 KW - CW - South Korean Remains Identified
The Vietnam War finally ends Monday for a South Korean officer killed in the crash of an American Huey helicopter in Vietnam 35 years ago. Major Woo Sik Park, serving as an allied military adviser to the U.S. Army, was a passenger aboard an American UH-1 Iroquois helicopter when it crashed in 1967, killing him and four U.S. soldiers.

July 29, 2002 POW-MIA Recognition Day Poster
The 2002 National POW/MIA Recognition Day Poster was unveiled on June 20th at the 33rd Annual Meeting of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia.

July 29, 2002 KW - CW - Korean War Identification
The remains of a Republic of Korea soldier, killed in the Vietnam War, have been identified and are being returned to his family today in ceremonies at Hawaii's National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

July 29, 2002 KW - CW - Wolfowitz... Accounting a 'Solemn Pledge'
"The fullest possible accounting is our solemn pledge -- however long it takes, wherever it takes us, whatever the cost," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told families of U.S. service members missing from the Korean and Cold Wars July 26 in Arlington, Va. The nation will not rest, he said, until the pledge has been fulfilled for the thousands of service members who are still missing after defending freedom during the Korean War, Vietnam and the Cold War.

July 29, 2002 WW II - Former POW Passes
He endured the Bataan Death March, when Japanese soldiers forced captured American troops to walk for 12 days without food or water to a POW camp. And his resulting stays in at least three POW camps nearly cost him his life.

July 29, 2002 KW - CW - 50 Years Later
Members of an American search team believe they have located the crash site of a U.S. military plane shot down in northeastern China 50 years ago. But there is no trace of the two American pilots killed in the crash during the Korean War. The C-47 aircraft was trying to pick up an anti-Communist Chinese spy in China's northeastern province, Jilin, when it was shot down in 1952. The plane's two pilots, Robert Snoddy and Norman Schwartz, were killed. Two CIA officers were captured and imprisoned for 20 years in Beijing.

July 29, 2002 KW - CW - US Finds Plane Wreckage in China
U.S. investigators searching for the remains of two CIA pilots killed in a plane crash 50 years ago in China's northeast said Monday they found wreckage but no bodies. An aging witness led the U.S. Army team to a crash site, and officials planned to test debris found there to see if it was from the C-47 that was shot down on Nov. 29, 1952, during a mission to pick up an anti-communist Chinese agent.

July 29, 2002 ME - Making Enemies Make Friends
Amid great pomp and ceremony, Iran this week laid to rest the remains of 570 soldiers who died during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war or in the long years of captivity that followed it. Their remains were returned under a bilateral prisoner exchange programme, facilitated by the Red Cross, that until relatively recently had appeared to be almost as moribund as the deceased POWs.

July 28, 2002 KW-CW - Putting a Name to the Nameless
William Arlo Wheeler was just 18 when he quit high school in Hazel Park and joined the U.S. Army. On Sept. 1, 1950, just a few months later, Wheeler was listed as killed in action in Korea. Wheeler is among 8,100 soldiers whose remains have not been found or identified from the Korean War between 1950 and 1953, in which 54,000 soldiers were killed.

July 27, 2002 PGW - Author Claims Speicher Shot Down by Friendly Fire
A new book about Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher, the former Kansas Citian and naval pilot reported killed in the early hours of the Persian Gulf War, contends that he is alive and being held prisoner in Iraq. And U.S. officials have known it, according to the book's author, Amy Waters Yarsinske, a former naval intelligence officer who spent eight years researching the Speicher story.She also alleges that Speicher was brought down not by an Iraqi MiG-25 or a surface-to-air missile, but by friendly fire. She said that fear of embarrassment spawned a series of denials and "obfuscation" by military officials about the pilot's actual fate.

July 27, 2002 KW - CW - New Book
For many Americans, the Korean War lies in that hazy region between the "good" war of World War II and the "bad" war of Vietnam. Few Americans recall how or why nearly 40,000 of their countrymen died in combat. Only an occasional late-night viewing of The Manchurian Candidate triggers interest in the conflict, and then only to dismiss the Korean War as that time when the communists "brainwashed" all our prisoners.

July 26, 2002 - POW-MIA Run
More than 100 motorcyclists will rev their way through city streets Saturday, connected by their love for the road and their fellow war veterans. At least a third of the contingent will be members of Rolling Thunder's new Greater Cincinnati chapter, which helped organize Saturday's fourth annual POW/MIA Run.

July 26, 2002 WW II - Former AP Chief/POW Passes
During World War II, Fuller went overseas with the Eighth Air Force as a navigator-bombardier on a B-17. On his 10th mission with the 457th Bomb Group, his plane caught fire from flak, and he bailed out over Nazi-occupied France. Fuller spent the next 14 months in a series of Stalag-lufts, POW camps for airmen, until U.S. Third Army tanks battered down the gates of Stalag VIII-A, outside Munich.

July 25, 2002 WW II - WW II POW Camp
n doing her research for the application, she found an old copy of the Mineral Wells Index, from probably the late '60s or early '70s, which detailed a bit about the POW camp under the headline of "WWII Prison Camp Now Buried In Local History." According to the article, "Between early 1943 and September, 1945, when WWII ended, the lives of the POWs read more like a summer camp for Boy Scouts as opposed to a Stalag 17 or an Auschwitz."

July 24, 2002 Civil War - 140 Years Later, POW Goes Home
Nearly 140 years after he died in a Union prisoner of war camp in Massachusetts, Lt. Edward John Kent Johnston is coming home. Johnston, said to be the last Confederate prisoner of war buried in New England, will be reinterred in October in north Florida's Bosque Bello Cemetery at the feet of his wife.

July 24, 2002 Cold War - Excavation of Crash Site Begins
Guided by the memories of an aging witness, an American search team is scouring a patch of northeastern China for a CIA plane that went down 50 years ago -- and the remains of the pilots believed lost in the crash. In a statement Wednesday, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing said the team had reached a site near the town of Antu in the northeastern province of Jilin and was clearing land and beginning sweeps with metal detectors to locate the wreckage of the unmarked C-47 aircraft.

July 24, 2002 ME - Repatriation, 20 Years Later
Thousands of black-clad Iranians beat their heads and chest in mourning Wednesday during a funeral procession for 570 soldiers, most of whom perished in Iraqi captivity after the 1980-88 war. The soldiers remains were repatriated to Iran on Sunday in an exchange in which Tehran gave Iraq 1,166 bodies.

July 24, 2002 SEA - The Search For Remains
Three decades have passed, and often now the payoff is little more than a handful of what American investigators call "possible osseous material." Sometimes they get lucky and find a tooth, the hardest and most durable bone in the body. The latest trophy is a sliver of what is believed to be human bone - dry, brittle, about five centimeters, or two inches, long. Unearthed near the old Ho Chi Minh Trail in southern Laos, it is on its way to Hawaii for testing in what the U.S. military calls the world's largest forensic identification laboratory.

July 24, 2002 ME - Iran-Iraq Exchange POW Remains
Iraq and Iran on Sunday exchanged the remains of 1,736 soldiers who were captured during the 1980-1988 war and died in captivity, a further step toward normalizing relations between the two neighbors.

July 23, 2002 WW II - Divers Plunder Graveyard Vessels
Take an artifact from a national battlefield such as Gettysburg or Antietam, and you could go to jail. But divers who take items from 165 World War II cargo ships sunk by enemy fire end up with a nice brass bell, porthole covers or other keepsakes. A Georgia man is pushing for a federal law to protect the ships, and he has the support of former merchant mariners, survivors of those who died, and divers, including some who salvaged artifacts.

July 23, 2002 SEA - VN Trade Repeal Rejected
The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelming rejected on Tuesday legislation to repeal normal trade relations with Vietnam, allowing the former war enemy to continue selling its goods in the United States at the same low tariffs enjoyed by most countries.

July 23, 2002 SEA - Stockdale Inducted Into Aviation Hall of Fame
He was among the latest inductees, joining James Stockdale, a retired Navy vice admiral and highest-ranking prisoner of war in Vietnam; the late World War II ace Hub Zemke; and helicopter designer Frank Piasecki. "I've always said adventure is the essence of life - to go where no man has gone before," Rutan said Saturday.

July 23, 2002 PGW - Yarsinske on Speicher
In No One Left Behind: The Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher Story, Yarsinske says Speicher was mistakenly shot down the opening night of the Gulf War in 1991 by U.S. forces fighting Iraq, then left for dead in the desert by Navy officials who assured his wife they were looking for him.

July 23, 2002 PGW - Speicher Book
"We believe that the evidence is overwhelming that he is alive. There have been several sightings over the last two years, though his whereabouts are classified," said Richard Adams, a nephew and family spokesman. "It is my opinion that he is being held as a trophy prisoner until Saddam feels he needs him."

July 22, 2002 WW II - Former POW Camp Explored
The first ever Prisoner of War Camp to be made a Scheduled Monument, Harperley POW camp in Weardale, County Durham, was announced today by Arts Minister, Tessa Blackstone, following its recommendation by English Heritage. A key range of buildings of World War II home front history, Harperley was erected in 1943 on requisitioned farmland. The site retains 85% of its buildings intact and contains unique internal fittings, including a theatre and fine wall paintings.

July 22, 2002 WW II - Former POW Camp Receives Monument Status
A Second World War prisoner-of-war camp became the first to be given Scheduled Monument status by English Heritage yesterday. Eighty-five per cent of Harperley camp in Weardale, Co Durham, which housed up to 1,400 German prisoners, remains intact. One of the standard huts was used as a theatre with a stage, orchestra pit, prompt box and tiered seating for the audience. A row of prison huts, one of which was altered into a theatre, with a stage and orchestra pit.

July 22, 2002 Former POW Man of the Year
n December of 1944, while serving with the United States Army's 106th Division, fighting in the famous "Battle of the Bulge," DeSantis was captured by German soldiers as a prisoner of war after serving just six days in France. DeSantis was kept in a German prison camp for five months.

July 21, 2002 Good People Doing Good Things

July 20, 2002 WW II - Former POW Passes

July 20, 2002 SEA - Former POW Saved by Airman
An Air Force man became a hero's hero Wednesday. He went to the rescue of one of the nation's most highly decorated veterans when his boat caught fire. Retired Air Force Col. George ''Bud'' Day, a fighter pilot who won the Medal of Honor for a daring escape while a prisoner of war in Vietnam, was heading home after picking up his 25-foot motorboat from a repair shop.

July 19, 2002 SEA - From Good Morning Vietnam to Remains Recovery
The former Air Force announcer, now an assistant to the director of the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office, was part of a delegation visiting sites in Southeast Asia where Americans are searching for missing servicemen. He wanted to see first-hand what members of the Joint Task Force for Full Accounting do in their quest for remains.

July 18, 2002 SEA - VOA POWs
During the Vietnam war, communist forces took more than 700 allied prisoners. Most people don't know that three of them worked for VOA. "There was an explosion that hit the house. And I said, 'uh-oh, this is bad,'" said Candido Badua. Cadido "Pop" Badua was right. It was bad. The house he shared with his boss, Chuck Willis, had just been hit by a satchel bomb thrown by a Viet Cong fighter. Mr. Willis was wounded in the foot. It was the Tet Offensive in January, 1968, in the Vietnamese city of Hue, not far from the VOA transmitter where they both worked.

July 18, 2002 SEA - Thompson Passes
Col. Floyd "Jimmy" Thompson, a decorated Army veteran who was the longest-held American prisoner during the Vietnam War, died Tuesday. He was 69. No cause of death was available.

July 17, 2002 JCS Chairman Meyers Remarks June 2002
Here at the Pentagon we were able to identify the remains of everyone who died. But in New York, over 1800 persons, men, women and children, have not been accounted for. That's over 1800 families. You know, as well as the families in New York, the very, very personal pain that goes with this rather cold statistic. If the terrorists thought that inflicting this kind of pain would cause us to cower, I think they know now that they were wrong. We are now determined to take the fight to them. And it's a fight against a very different foe. And as citizens, you have a need to know what I think about this enemy and this war.

July 17, 2002 DASD Jennings Remarks June 2002
MY COMMITMENT TO THE POW/MIA ISSUE GOES BACK MANY YEARS WHEN I WAS DIRECTOR OF THE SELECTIVE SERVICE, AND ANN ASKED THAT WE FLY THE POW/MIA FLAG OVER OUR HEADQUARTERS. DESPITE ADVICE TO THE CONTRARY FROM THE LAWYERS AND OTHER KEEPERS OF THE BUREAUCRATIC NORMS, WE FLEW THE FLAG AT SELECTIVE SERVICE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 1987, AND I'M PROUD TO SAY IT HAS FLOWN THERE EVER SINCE.

July 17, 2002 DSD Wolfowitz Remarks June 2002
The 20th Century is history now, both its darkness and its light. It falls to us to carry that same light forward into the 21st Century. But the beacon will be dim if we fail to honor the debt that we owe to those who have yet to return from the scenes of their struggle. We owe it to them and to posterity. The unfinished business of the 20th Century must be our business in the 21st. As President Bush put it when speaking of the fight for freedom, "We will not waiver, we will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail." You have his word on that.

July 17, 2002 Sad News
The following has been provided by the family of Ruth Danielson, who passed away Monday, July 15, 2002. Ruth was the mother of Capt. Mark G. Danielson, USAF.

July 17, 2002 National POW-MIA Recognition Day & Poster

July 16, 2002 DPMO 2003-2004 Family Update Schedule
JUL 26 2002 - Washington, DC (family u[date held in consolidation with the annual government briefings) :: AUG 17 2002 - Kansas City, MO :: SEP 21, 2002 - NYC, NY :: OCT 26, 2002 - Slat Lake City, UT :: NOV 16, 2002 - Tampa, FL :: DEC 2002 - NO BRIEFINGS :: JAN 18 2003 - San Francisco, CA :: FEB 22, 2003 - Birmingham, AL :: MAR 22, 2003 - Houston, TX :: APR 26, 2003 - Detroit, MI :: JUN 18-21, 2003 - Washington, DC (family u[date held in consolidation with the annual government briefings) :: JUL 25-26, 2003 - Washington, DC (family u[date held in consolidation with the annual government briefings) :: AUG 23, 2003 - Seattle, WA :: SEP 20, 2003 - St. Louis, MO :: OCT 18, 2003 - Jacksonville, FL :: NOV 22, 2003 - Phoenix, AZ

July 15, 2002 Cold War - CILHI News Release
An investigative team is going into Jilin, China to locate the crash site of a C-47 aircraft and the remains of 2 pilots. The investigative team will be made up of eight CILHI members. They departed Hawaii on July 15 and are expected to spend approximately three weeks getting to the crash site then investigating the area for possible remains. The team will survey the site and speak with witnesses in an attempt to locate the remains of the pilots. The CILHI team will consist of members who possess highly specialized skills in forensic anthropology, logistics, photography, medicine, and mortuary affairs.

July 14, 2002 Cold War - CILHI Team Set For China Mission
This week, the Chinese government announced they will allow the team access to rugged northeastern China, where theyıll attempt to locate the burial sites of two U.S. pilots who died 50 years ago when their unmarked plane crashed during a CIA spy mission. The decision represented a breakthrough in U.S. efforts to win Beijingıs cooperation in accounting for Americans lost during the 1950-53 Korean War, Pentagon officials said.

July 14, 2002 SEA - NAF Bits 'N' Pieces
Summary of News

July 14, 2002 SEA - MIA's Fractured Family Reunites
The Vietnam War made sisters-in-law of Linda Moreau and Hong Thi Chau 30 years ago. But it took 25 years for them to find each other, two needles in a global haystack. Moreau lives in Oregon, Chau in Memphis. Moreau's brother, Mickey Allen Wilson, was 24 when the Army helicopter he piloted was shot down near Quang Tri on Jan. 8, 1973. He and five others on the aircraft were missing in action for six years before being declared dead by the U.S. government.

July 14, 2002 WW II - Ex-POW Returns Home After 60 Years in Russia
The last of 150,000 Austrian prisoners of war captured by the Soviet Union during World War II has returned home to his family after 60 years in exile. Weak and ill, but with eyes sparkling with joy, 80-year-old Franz Steeg arrived in Vienna International Airport for an emotional reunion with his family, who had thought they would never see him again.

July 14, 2002 KW-CW - Gold Star Wives
Ellen Blissenbach got off the bus at Punchbowl and made a beeline to the memorial for U.S. Army soldiers missing from the Korean War. I was 2 1/2 months pregnant when he left Fort Lewis on June 27, 1950," the Madison, Wis., resident and Gold Star Wives member said, looking up at her husband's name etched into the white wall."

July 14, 2002 WW II - Recovered Aircraft Brings Back Memories
"What brought me to write this letter to you," d'Amico wrote, "was caused by an event that took place a few weeks ago and (in) which I was involved: the rescue of a Curtiss P-40 fighter from the sea near Anzio. "I was contacted by a search-divers team to identify the submerged plane on the basis of data found on the fuselage."

July 14, 2002 SEA - Former POW Motivational Speaker
Retired Air Force Col. Edward Hubbard likes to engage people in a little mind game he calls "Good Day or Bad Day?" Consider, oh, July 20, 1966. That morning, as the Vietnam War raged, 28-year-old Lt. Ed Hubbard's jet was shot out of the skies over North Vietnam by a SAM missile, causing the six-man crew to eject at 16,000 feet as the aircraft screamed out of control. Within hours, he was captured, stripped and forced to march for hours blindfolded with a rope tied around his neck, thus beginning more than 6 1/2 years as a POW, during which he was routinely starved, tortured and tossed in solitary confinement.

July 14, 2002 SEA - Versace - The Strength of Spirit
Nick Rowe was afraid Rocky Versace would be forgotten. The last time I saw Rowe, in 1985 when he was teaching Fort Bragg soldiers to withstand the horrors of a prisoner-of-war camp, he suggested I write about Rocky instead of him. "He was the real hero," Rowe said. "He was the bravest man I ever knew." That's saying something, because Lt. Col. Nick Rowe knew something about bravery. Rowe spent five years in a Viet Cong prison. Two Americans were with him in the isolated jungle camp, Green Beret medic Dan Pitzer and the irrepressible Capt. Humbert Roque "Rocky" Versace.

July 14, 2002 Cold War - A Family Waits For Answers From China
It happened almost 50 years ago, but Betty Kirzinger remembers vividly the pain of learning that her brother's C-47 airplane had disappeared from radar over the Sea of Japan.

July 13, 2002 SEA - New Book
A Gift of Barbed Wire is a searing look at the lives of South Vietnamese officials and their families left behind in Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1975. A former Marine who served in Vietnam, Robert McKelvey went on to practice psychiatry and, through his work in refugee camps and U.S. social service organizations, met South Vietnamese men from all walks of life who had been imprisoned in re-education camps immediately after the war. McKelvey's interviews with these former political prisoners, their wives, and their children reveal the devastating, long-term impact of their incarceration.

July 13, 2002 PGW - Speicher... More News
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has asked the State Department to ask Iraq if it has any new information in the case of a missing US Navy pilot that would warrant a meeting between US and Iraqi officials, a Pentagon spokesman said Thursday.

July 13, 2002 PGW - US & Iraq Become Pen-Pals Over Speicher
The Bush administration will send a diplomatic note, but not a team of people, to Iraq as part of efforts to resolve the fate of missing Navy pilot Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld stated in a memorandum to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on Monday that he agreed sending the note "is the best approach" on Baghdad's offer to allow investigators to search for the pilot.

July 12, 2002 PGW - Speicher Case Going Nowhere - VOA News
   The Bush administration has turned down Iraq's offer to receive U.S. investigators to look into the fate of a missing Gulf War pilot. Instead, the United States will send Baghdad a diplomatic note asking whether Iraq intends to provide new information about the pilot, Lieutenant Commander Scott Speicher.

July 11, 2002 WW II - Feds Want Japanese Slave Labor POW Suits Tossed Out
The federal government urged a California appeals court on Wednesday to throw out slave labor lawsuits brought by World War II POWs against Japanese companies, arguing that a state law allowing such suits is unconstitutional.

July 11, 2002 PGW - Speicher - DPMO On Hot Seat
The Pentagon's Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office is on the hot seat. Critics say the office is dragging its feet in responding to an Iraqi government offer to allow a delegation of U.S. officials to go to Iraq and investigate the case of missing Navy pilot Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher.

July 11, 2002 WW II - PT 109 Found
''We have an understanding with the Kennedy family as well as others who lost loved ones -- there were two people lost from the boat -- that we will not disturb the site and we will not dig it up.''

July 11, 2002 Cold War - First Ever Korean War Era Case by China
The Chinese government announced today that it will allow the Pentagon to search in northeastern China for the remains of two American pilots who died 50 years ago when their unmarked plane crashed during a spy mission for the CIA.

July 11, 2002 Cold War - The 50 Year Wait
The sister of a Cold War-era spy pilot is a step closer to burying the remains of Robert C. Snoddy, who vanished 50 years ago in a covert mission over northeastern China. Ruth Boss, 78, of Creswell, said her brother never told her he worked for the CIA.

July 10, 2002 Cold War - China Permits Search for 1952 Aircraft
China says a U.S. Department of Defense team will arrive next week to search for the remains of two American who were shot down on a spy mission in 1952.

July 10, 2002 SEA - ICRC POW Inspection Certificate

July 10, 2002 Flag Etiquette
During a speech, Medal of Honor recipient Leo K. Thorness discussed his confinement in a North Vietnam prisoner of war camp and told of the man who best portrayed to him the significance of our nation's symbol.

July 10, 2002 Morocco - Long-Term, 2 Decade POWs Released
A rebel group fighting for independence of the Western Sahara from Morocco freed 101 Moroccan prisoners on Sunday, a report said.

July 10, 2002 SEA - Won't Forget the Missing
No American witnessed Rodney Strobridge's crash in an Army helicopter in South Vietnam. The Army captain from Torrance was just shy of his 31st birthday when, on May 11, 1972, enemy ground fire hit the tail of the aircraft he was co-piloting along with Capt. Robert J. Williams. A Vietnamese refugee reportedly claimed that he later found skeletal remains in the area.

July 09, 2002 PGW - Speicher - Transcript from Hannity & Colmes
Is Iraq Holding an American Pilot Prisoner?

July 09, 2002 Cold War - China OKs US Search For Cold War Remains
The US Pentagon is sending a team to north-eastern China to investigate the possibility of recovering the remains of two pilots who died during a spy mission 50 years ago. An eight-member search team from the Army's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii is scheduled to leave on 15 July for the crash site near the town of Antu in China's Jilin province.

July 09, 2002 SEA - Captain Versace MOH - Presidential Remarks
"Good afternoon, and welcome to the White House. It's a -- this is a special occasion. I am honored to be a part of the gathering as we pay tribute to a true American patriot, and a hero, Captain Humbert "Rocky" Versace. Nearly four decades ago, his courage and defiance while being held captive in Vietnam cost him his life. Today it is my great privilege to recognize his extraordinary sacrifices by awarding him the Medal of Honor."

July 09, 2002 SEA - Long Overdue Honor
Rocky Versace's friends will be there today at the White House. The high school buddies from Alexandria who decided they had to do something to honor Versace, dead now 37 years. The postal worker from Cleveland galvanized after reading about Versace's ordeals. The members of the West Point Class of 1959 who picked up the fight for their classmate. The family he left behind.

July 09, 2002 Civil War - Slave Gravedigger Preserved POW History
One of the finest Civil War histories I've ever read just crossed my desk -- Michael Horigan's recently published "Elmira: Death Camp of the North." The subject is Camp Chemung, 32 acres in Elmira in upstate New York, which had the highest death rate among Union prison camps.

July 09, 2002 SEA - Learned Lessons Shared
Air Force Col. Ed Hubbard arrived in Vietnam on June 20, 1966. He was captured and imprisoned in Hanoi on July 20, 1966, just 30 days after his tour of duty began. He spent the next 2,420 days as a prisoner of war in and around the capital of North Vietnam.

July 09, 2002 SEA - Hanoi Hilton 2002
Even more well-known than the opera house - at least among foreign visitors - is Hao Lo Prison Museum, the "Hanoi Hilton." The museum is as sobering as the opera house is uplifting. Most of the once-substantial complex was demolished in recent years to clear land for one of the city's few highrises. The museum occupies what remains of the former prison, built by the French in 1896 to tame (and, not infrequently, torture) Vietnamese rebels.

July 09, 2002 WW II - Nurse-POW Passes
A survivor of two wars, a prison camp and near starvation, Col. Ruby Bradley, one of the most decorated women in U.S. military history, was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery on Tuesday, nearly 40 years after she retired from the Army.

July 09, 2002 SAR - Tempting Death to Preserve Lives
In Air Force boot camp in 1967, the two lean visitors in the snappy crimson berets and bloused trousers of the Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Service impressed enlisted man Douglas Horka, who until then expected to spend the Vietnam War pushing paper at a Nebraska Air base.

July 09, 2002 SEA - Lao Officials Visit Recovery Team
Senior Laotion government ministers have toured the base camp of a joint US-Lao task force searching for Americans missing in action or MIAs from the Vietnam War.

July 09, 2002 KW-CW - 51 Years Later, A Family Waits & Wonders
Jose Maria Samora is out there somewhere, in spirit or in flesh, but no one, not even the United States government knows where. He was born in Alamosa in 1933 and enthusiastically enrolled in the Army in 1950 at the young age of 17. But soon after he arrived in Korea in 1951, Samora became a prisoner of war at Suan Bean Camp. It was terrible for the family, but not as bad as it would be.

July 09, 2002 SEA - DNA Identifies Vietnam MIA
The remains of Eugene F. Christiansen, a soldier from Barstow who has been missing in action since 1969 during the Vietnam War, have been identified through DNA sampling, family members said Friday.

July 09, 2002 SEA - Statue Honors POW
Thirty-seven years after dying at the hands of his Viet Cong captors, Army Capt. Humbert R. "Rocky" Versace is being officially recognized in Alexandria and in Washington. In Alexandria, hundreds of people are expected to attend the dedication of the Captain Rocky Versace Memorial Plaza and Alexandria Vietnam Veterans Memorial Saturday morning. And on Monday, President Bush will present Versace's surviving brothers with a posthumous Medal of Honor.

July 09, 2002 SEA - Army Awards 1st Ever MOH for Bravery During Captivity
Thirty-seven years after he was executed by his Viet Cong captors, Rocky Versace is to be honored today with the Medal of Honor -- the first Army soldier to receive the award for his actions while in captivity, defense historians say.

July 09, 2002 SEA - Rockey Versace Awarded Medal of Honor
Unlike the Air Force, Navy and Marines, the Army never before has awarded a Medal of Honor to a POW from Vietnam for heroism during captivity.

July 08, 2002 SEA - End to a Mystery
David Evert, 40, left, and brother Daniel, 42, spoke at Hickam Air Force Base about how their father's remains were located in Vietnam and brought home to Arizona for burial. Capt. Lawrence G. Evert, then 29, had been shot down over Vietnam in 1967.

July 08, 2002 WW II - DNA Hopes
Far out where flowers are blooming, Out where skies are blue, I send a host of good wishes, and Aloha to you.

July 08, 2002 WW II - WW II Recovery Missions Begin
Search and recovery operations will begin shortly in Europe for American service members unaccounted for from World War II.

July 08, 2002 CILHI & JTFFA Merge
The Department of Defense has recommended the merging of the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii (CILHI) and Joint Task Force-Full Accounting (JTF-FA) into one organization. The goal is to have the organizations merged by October 2003.

July 08, 2002 WW II - Former SS Officer Sentenced for Murdering POWs
In what could be one of Germany's last trials of Nazis, a Hamburg court Friday sentenced a former SS officer to seven years in prison for ordering the reprisal killing of 59 Italian prisoners in 1944.

July 08, 2002 SEA - 74th JFA Heads to Laos
A Joint Field Activity consisting of four recovery teams and one investigation team will deploy on Tuesday from Hawaii with hopes of investigating and conducting recovery operations leading to the identification of Americans still missing or unaccounted for from the war in Southeast Asia.

July 08, 2002 WW II - Australia Remembers War Dead & POWs

July 08, 2002 SEA - DOD News Release
For 34 years the Evert family had many unanswered questions. Today the family has some answers, and their father to bring home for a proper burial.

July 08, 2002 WW II - After 57 Years, ex-POW Remembered
It took 57 years, but George Fraley finally has the recognition he earned as an infantryman in the U.S. Army during World War II.

July 08, 2002 Physical Effects Lifelong
A passenger in the Ex-Prisoner of War Association's truck, Shipp's ticket to ride cost him nearly four years in a Japanese POW camp.

July 08, 2002 KW-CW - Manchurian Candidate Director Passes
"The Manchurian Candidate" was about a Korean War veteran who was brainwashed as a prisoner of war and programmed to kill a liberal politician.

July 07, 2002 PGW - S. 1339 - 37 On Board, Revisions & Update
A bill to amend the Bring Them Home Alive Act of 2000 to provide an asylum program with regard to American Persian Gulf War POW/MIAs, and for other purposes.

July 07, 2002 SEA - NLF Update Line
Family Update

July 06, 2002 SEA - Won't Forget Missing Soldiers
No American witnessed Rodney Strobridge's crash in an Army helicopter in South Vietnam. The Army captain from Torrance was just shy of his 31st birthday when, on May 11, 1972, enemy ground fire hit the tail of the aircraft he was co-piloting along with Capt. Robert J. Williams. A Vietnamese refugee reportedly claimed that he later found skeletal remains in the area.

July 06, 2002 WW II - D-DAY Accounting
The National D-Day Memorial Foundation is working on a first-ever accounting of American and Allied forces who died in the June 6, 1944, Normandy invasion that broke Hitler's grasp of Europe.

July 05, 2002 PGW - Jesse Jackson Interested in Speicher Case
Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson is interested in helping resolve the fate of missing Jacksonville Navy pilot Scott Speicher, according to an official in Jackson's organization and a lawyer for Speicher's family.

July 03, 2002 Fakes, Phonies & Frauds
The fellow sat at a card table in front of a Pacific Beach grocery store selling U.S. and POW-MIA flags. A hand-scribbled sign pleaded: "Donate to Hospitalized Veterans." When Paul Nenner, a retired Air Force officer, asked the fellow whom he represented, the man cited the American Veterans Association on Morena Boulevard. But there is no such office there.

July 02, 2002 PGW - Book Asserts Speicher Alive in Iraq
A new book about Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher, the former Kansas Citian and naval pilot reported killed in the early hours of the Persian Gulf War, contends that he is alive and being held prisoner in Iraq.

July 01, 2002 Defend America Thank You

POW-MIA Issue Update August 2002