USA — Accounting for POWs, MIAs a Year-round DOD Mission

WASHINGTON, Sept. 15, 2011 — As Amer­i­cans pause tomor­row to observe POW/MIA Recog­ni­tion Day, teams of mil­i­tary and civil­ian experts will be exca­vat­ing sites in Europe and the South Pacif­ic look­ing for remains to help iden­ti­fy ser­vice mem­bers still miss­ing from past wars.

Teams from Joint POW/MIA Account­ing Com­mand, based at Joint Base Pearl Har­bor-Hick­am in Hawaii, will be on the job, work­ing to pro­vide the fullest pos­si­ble account­ing of America’s miss­ing, and liv­ing up to their command’s mot­to, “Until they are home.” 

Addi­tion­al teams are prepar­ing for sim­i­lar mis­sions over the next cou­ple of months to South Korea, Laos, Chi­na, Viet­nam and Ger­many, said Army Maj. Ramon Oso­rio, a JPAC spokesman. 

POW/MIA Recog­ni­tion Day hon­ors the sac­ri­fices America’s miss­ing ser­vice mem­bers and their fam­i­lies have made for their coun­try, Oso­rio said. 

But as Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma empha­sized today in his POW/MIA Recog­ni­tion Day procla­ma­tion, it also pro­vides an impor­tant reminder that the Unit­ed States is com­mit­ted to bring­ing its fall­en ser­vice mem­bers home to their fam­i­lies � and that it won’t give up, no mat­ter how long it takes, or how dif­fi­cult it might be. 

“We will nev­er give up the search for those who are held as pris­on­ers of war or have gone miss­ing under our country’s flag,” he said. “We hon­or their sac­ri­fice, and we must care for their fam­i­lies and pur­sue the fullest pos­si­ble account­ing for all miss­ing mem­bers of our armed forces. 

“Togeth­er, we must serve our nation’s patri­ots as well as they have served us � by sup­port­ing them when they come home, and by car­ry­ing on the lega­cy of those who do not,” he con­tin­ued. “This is a promise we keep for our fall­en, for our vet­er­ans past and present, and for all those whose loved ones have not returned from the battlefield.” 

JPAC’s mis­sion is to pro­vide the fullest pos­si­ble account­ing for about 84,000 U.S. ser­vice­mem­bers from the nation’s wars. The vast major­i­ty of these � 74,184 � are from World War II, but the lost also include 1,680 from Viet­nam, 7,979 from Korea, and 127 from the Cold War. 

In addi­tion, two U.S. sol­diers from the cur­rent oper­a­tions are clas­si­fied as “Miss­ing-Cap­tured.” Army Spec. Ahmed Altaie, an Army Reserve sol­dier assigned to Provin­cial Recon­struc­tion Team Bagh­dad, alleged­ly was kid­napped in Octo­ber 2006 while on his way to vis­it his fam­i­ly in Bagh­dad. The Pen­ta­gon changed his sta­tus from “Duty Sta­tus Where­abouts Unknown” to “Miss­ing-Cap­tured” in Decem­ber 2006. 

Army Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl, a mem­ber of the 25th Infantry Division’s 4th Brigade Com­bat Team, was cap­tured in Afghanistan’s Pak­ti­ka province on June 30, 2009. His sta­tus was changed to “Miss­ing-Cap­tured” on July 3, 2009 after the Tal­iban released video of him that was lat­er authen­ti­cat­ed by U.S. officials. 

Because they are asso­ci­at­ed with ongo­ing oper­a­tions, U.S. Cen­tral Com­mand has lead respon­si­bil­i­ty for these efforts, Osario said. 

But for all oth­er cas­es, JPAC is com­mit­ted to the fullest pos­si­ble account­ing of every miss­ing U.S. mil­i­tary mem­ber. “That’s what we would love to do, and to be able to tell every fam­i­ly mem­ber that we are going to find every last per­son,” Osario said. 

But it’s an admit­ted­ly daunt­ing task, par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of the many World War II MIAs who served aboard air­craft lost at sea. “The num­ber is stag­ger­ing,’ Osario said. 

Despite the chal­lenges, JPAC has had a sol­id track record of suc­cess. Since 2003, its 400 mil­i­tary and civil­ian spe­cial­ists have iden­ti­fied more than 750 miss­ing Amer­i­cans. Com­bined with efforts of its pre­de­ces­sor units dat­ing back to the 1970s, it has iden­ti­fied close to 2,000 ser­vice mem­bers, Osario reported. 

Ear­li­er this month, on Sept. 1, the Defense Depart­ment announced that the remains of one more, Air Force Maj. Thomas E. Reit­mann who was shot down over North Viet­nam in 1965, had been iden­ti­fied and returned to his fam­i­ly for bur­ial with full mil­i­tary hon­ors in Arling­ton Nation­al Cemetery. 

JPAC is work­ing to build on those suc­cess­es, send­ing teams that include foren­sic anthro­pol­o­gists, foren­sic arche­ol­o­gists and sci­en­tif­ic direc­tors to poten­tial crash and bur­ial sites around the world. Teams returned dur­ing the past week from Papua New Guinea, Viet­nam, Europe and, pos­si­bly to some people’s sur­prise, to Cana­da, where an under­wa­ter recov­ery team inves­ti­gat­ed a World War II air­craft down­ing just off the coast. 

Two addi­tion­al mis­sions are under way at World War II sites: one west of Frank­furt, Ger­many, and anoth­er in Van­u­atu in the South Pacific. 

Once remains or oth­er per­son­al arti­facts such as dog­tags are repa­tri­at­ed to JPAC’s head­quar­ters in Hawaii, experts at the command’s Cen­tral Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Lab­o­ra­to­ry � the world’s largest foren­sic anthro­pol­o­gy lab � use the most advanced sci­ence avail­able to match them to a spe­cif­ic miss­ing ser­vice mem­ber. Among tools used is mito­chon­dr­i­al DNA, which includes unique sig­na­tures from the mater­nal line and helps the JPAC staff make iden­ti­fi­ca­tions once not con­sid­ered possible. 

But JPAC does­n’t work alone in ful­fill­ing its mis­sion. It works “all the time, every day” with the Armed Forces DNA iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Lab­o­ra­to­ry in Rockville, Md., which runs DNA sequences for JPAC and pro­vides a sys­tem of dou­ble-checks for find­ings, Osario said. 

In addi­tion, the Defense Pris­on­er of War/Missing Per­son­nel Office in Wash­ing­ton pro­vides pol­i­cy guid­ance and over­sight for its mis­sions. And each ser­vice has an office that works direct­ly with fam­i­lies of the miss­ing through­out the account­ing process. 

As JPAC paus­es tomor­row to host a POW/MIA Recog­ni­tion Day cer­e­mo­ny at the Nation­al Memo­r­i­al Ceme­tery of the Pacif­ic, known as the “Punch­bowl,” and oth­er mil­i­tary bases around the world com­mem­o­rate the day, Osario empha­sized that account­ing for America’s MIAs is 365-day-a-year mission. 

“The rea­son we con­tin­ue to do this is because it is the right thing to do,” he said. “Peo­ple under­stand the impor­tance of not for­get­ting the sac­ri­fices that those who have gone before us have made .… 

“For those who decid­ed to raise their right hand and go forth to do that, we owe it to them and we def­i­nite­ly owe it to their fam­i­lies so they know we are going to give our 200 per­cent to do what’s right and work as hard as we can to find as many of them as we pos­si­bly can.” 

This, he said, sends a pow­er­ful mes­sage to those serv­ing in today’s conflicts. 

“If we are going to ask you to go off and put your­self in harm’s way and poten­tial­ly pay the ulti­mate price, if tragedy were to strike, know­ing that your coun­try has your back and will do every­thing it pos­si­bly can do to ensure you end up with your fam­i­ly,” he said. “That is huge. It clear­ly shows the men and women who are serv­ing today at Amer­i­ca stands behind them, regard­less of what may occur.” 

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

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →