The Graybeards - Korean War Veterans Association

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