Teams Search for Missing Americans in China

JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii, March 8, 2011 — Coop­er­a­tive efforts between the Unit­ed States and Chi­na for account­ing of Amer­i­cans miss­ing from the Kore­an War broad­ened last month with the arrival of a spe­cial­ly trained arche­o­log­i­cal team in Guang­dong province.

The group from the U.S. Joint Pris­on­ers of War/Missing in Action Account­ing Com­mand, known as JPAC, arrived in Chi­na in mid-Feb­ru­ary. Some 19 JPAC recov­ery team mem­bers will search for 12 miss­ing Amer­i­cans lost as the result of an alleged Novem­ber 1950 U.S. air­craft crash, offi­cials said. 

Recov­ery teams will search for human remains, life-sup­port items and oth­er mate­r­i­al evi­dence that may fur­ther the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of miss­ing Americans. 

JPAC is a joint­ly manned U.S. Pacif­ic Com­mand orga­ni­za­tion of more than 400 mil­i­tary and civil­ian spe­cial­ists that has inves­ti­gat­ed and recov­ered miss­ing U.S. ser­vice mem­bers since the 1970s. 

The Unit­ed States and Chi­na have coop­er­at­ed dur­ing POW/MIA account­ing mis­sions in the past, offi­cials said, with both coun­tries rec­og­niz­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of these human­i­tar­i­an operations. 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Face­book and/or on Twit­ter