The Graybeards - Korean War Veterans Association
The Graybeards - Korean War Veterans Association
The Graybeards - Korean War Veterans Association
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Defense POW/MIA Weekly Update<br />
<strong>Korean</strong> <strong>War</strong>/Cold <strong>War</strong> Document Family<br />
Research<br />
November 24, 1999<br />
Remains<br />
Servicemen<br />
Returned to U.S.<br />
Remains believed<br />
to be those of 11<br />
unaccounted-for<br />
American servicemen<br />
from two wars arrived at Hickam<br />
AFB, Hawaii, last week.<br />
Two sets of remains from Laos<br />
and six from Vietnam were returned to<br />
U.S. possession during ceremonies earlier<br />
in the week in Vientiane and Hanoi,<br />
respectively. Those eight, plus three others<br />
repatriated from North Korea, arrived<br />
on a U. S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster IlI.<br />
<strong>The</strong>ir arrival at Hickam AFB begins the<br />
identification phase at the U.S. Army<br />
Central Identification Laboratory-Hawaii<br />
<strong>The</strong> eight sets of remains from Laos<br />
and Vietnam were recovered by military<br />
and civilian members of Joint Task Force-<br />
Full Accounting and the U.S. Army<br />
Central Identification Laboratory-Hawaii<br />
during three separate search and recovery<br />
missions held from August to November.<br />
<strong>The</strong> three sets of remains from North<br />
Korea were recovered in October and<br />
November by a team from the U.S.<br />
Army’s CILHI.<br />
Joint U.S./North <strong>Korean</strong> efforts to<br />
recover more than 8,200 unaccounted-for<br />
Americans from the <strong>Korean</strong> <strong>War</strong> began in<br />
1996. To date, three servicemen from that<br />
effort have been identified and returned<br />
home to their families, with many others<br />
currently in the identification phase.<br />
More information about the U.S. government’s<br />
worldwide mission to account<br />
for its missing servicemembers can be<br />
found on the Defense POW/Missing<br />
Personnel Affairs office website at<br />
www.dtic.mil/dpmo.<br />
Moscow Plenary Meeting<br />
Concludes<br />
<strong>The</strong> 16th plenary session of the<br />
U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on<br />
POW/MlAs was held recently in Moscow.<br />
After a year during which the commission’s<br />
work was complicated by politicalmilitary<br />
developments, there was optimism<br />
that its humanitarian work in search<br />
of information on missing American and<br />
Russian servicemen would be revitalized.<br />
<strong>The</strong> U. S. co-chairman of the commission<br />
is retired Maj. Gen. Roland Lajoie.<br />
He met for the first time in this position in<br />
plenary session with the Russian co-chairman,<br />
Gen. -Maj. Vladimir Antonovich<br />
Zolotarev, and with the other commissioners.<br />
Information of value to the commission<br />
is gained primarily through archival<br />
research and interviews of veterans, government<br />
officials and other knowledgeable<br />
Russian and American citizens.<br />
During this plenary session, specific proposals<br />
for expanded archival access and<br />
interviews were discussed in the commission’s<br />
four working groups: Vietnam <strong>War</strong>;<br />
<strong>Korean</strong> <strong>War</strong>; Cold <strong>War</strong>; and WW II.<br />
Highlights of the sessions included<br />
conversations with former KGB directors<br />
Semichastniy and Kryuchkov, and a meeting<br />
with Gen.-Col. Manilov of the general<br />
staff which touched on improved access<br />
to relevant <strong>Korean</strong> <strong>War</strong> documents at the<br />
Central Archives of the Ministry of<br />
Defense at Podolsk as a first step to<br />
broadening our overall archival research.<br />
<strong>The</strong> U. S. side also presented a comprehensive<br />
briefing on U. S. POWs in<br />
Vietnam. A. Denis Clift, the U.S. cochairman<br />
of the Cold <strong>War</strong> working group,<br />
accepted a request for information on<br />
Soviet servicemen who served in<br />
Afghanistan. <strong>The</strong> Russian side provided a<br />
very positive update on the research in the<br />
Central Navy archives in Gatchina regarding<br />
several Cold <strong>War</strong> incidents.<br />
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Korean</strong> <strong>War</strong> working group developed<br />
a plan of action for authenticating<br />
reports that have come to the commission’s<br />
attention about the presence of<br />
American servicemen said to have been<br />
observed in Soviet camps or other detention<br />
facilities. <strong>The</strong> chairman of the WWII<br />
working group provided his counterparts<br />
documents relating to Soviet air losses<br />
over Yugoslavia during WW II.<br />
Both the U. S. and Russian sides<br />
renewed their commitment to continue<br />
cooperative efforts in search of information<br />
to clarify the circumstances of loss<br />
and to establish the fates of missing servicemen<br />
of both sides.<br />
Researchers Find POW/MIA<br />
Data at Records Center<br />
Staff members from DPMO and CILHI<br />
conducted research last week at the<br />
National Personnel Records Center in St.<br />
Louis to review selected <strong>Korean</strong> <strong>War</strong> files<br />
which may add details about the status of<br />
servicemen missing from that war<br />
Prior to the trip, DPMO compiled a list<br />
of several hundred <strong>Korean</strong> <strong>War</strong> personnel<br />
who remain unaccounted-for. <strong>The</strong> NPRC<br />
retrieved 235 personnel files although<br />
many files were destroyed in the 1973<br />
fire. <strong>The</strong> team copied data related to losses<br />
from each of the four services. <strong>The</strong> data<br />
found includes: report of death memoranda<br />
on U.S. Army personnel who were<br />
killed in action or who died while prisoners<br />
of war. <strong>The</strong>se were among the approximately<br />
1,200 such memoranda copied<br />
during the last three research trips to St.<br />
Louis. <strong>The</strong> memoranda contain statements<br />
of individuals who witnessed the<br />
deaths of specific individuals. Some contain<br />
specific burial locations. <strong>The</strong> records<br />
also contain circumstances of loss and<br />
investigations of loss incidents, some of<br />
which number 60 pages in length. Copies<br />
were provided to CILHI and the data will<br />
also be disseminated to the next-of-kin<br />
through the service casualty offices.<br />
Since the NPRC files records requests<br />
with the records, the researchers were also<br />
able to recover addresses of nearly 100<br />
next-of-kin. <strong>The</strong> addresses are being provided<br />
to the services to assist in their outreach<br />
effort to <strong>Korean</strong> <strong>War</strong> families.<br />
<strong>The</strong> team located data on four members<br />
of the crew of the USS Brush, who<br />
were lost when the ship hit a mine. <strong>The</strong>ir<br />
remains were recovered shortly after the<br />
incident but they were carried as MIA on<br />
the PMKOR. Navy Casualty will remove<br />
those names from the PMKOR.<br />
Also found was information on three<br />
U.S. Navy personnel lost on Dec. 30,<br />
1946 in an aircraft supporting Adm.<br />
Byrd’s Antarctic expedition. <strong>The</strong>ir<br />
remains were buried in snow at a location<br />
specified on their certificates of death.<br />
Page 24<br />
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Graybeards</strong>