Article Contributed on: 11/3/2009 12:54:03 PM
American troops are on the ground in Vietnam. No, they aren't hunting for the Vietcong, nor are they making one last attempt to rout the North Vietnamese Army. Rather, they are members of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) working side by side with their former adversaries to locate the remains of missing US servicemen, still unaccounted for thirty-five years after the United States pulled its troops from the country.
JPAC was formed October 1, 2003 by the merger of the Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii (CILHI), which moved from Thailand in 1976; and Joint Task Force-Full Accounting (JTF-FA), created in 1992 to account for Americans missing from the Vietnam War. JPAC is manned by approximately 400 military personnel and Department of the Navy civilians. They also boast the largest forensic anthropology laboratory in the world.
Although JPAC is headquartered in Hawaii, it maintains three permanent overseas detachments to support investigation and recovery operations: Detachment One in Bangkok, Thailand; Detachment Two in Hanoi, Vietnam; and Detachment Three in Vientiane, Laos.
Prior to recommending a site for recovery, JPAC investigative teams interview witnesses, reconnoiter the site, and survey an area's safety and logistical challenges. The goal of investigative missions is to collect enough information to connect a particular site with one or more missing servicemen.
At any given time, there are about 200 sites awaiting recovery operations. Each year, JPAC conducts roughly ten recovery missions in Southeast Asia, five recovery missions in Korea, and ten missions elsewhere to search for MIAs from World War II and the Cold War.
During recovery, a team of ten to fourteen people, led by a team leader and a forensic anthropologist, will mark off their search area into a grid and search one section at a time. All of the removed soil is carefully sifted by hand through wire screens to capture any artifacts or human remains. This may require the assistance of up to 100 local workers.
All remains and artifacts are sent to JPAC's Central Identification Laboratory via U.S. military transport plane, where they are met by an arrival ceremony and honor guard. At the laboratory, the remains and artifacts are stored in a secure limited-access area. Lab scientists can then begin the process of identification through analysis of skeletal and dental remains, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), and personal effects or equipment. On average, JPAC identifies six MIAs per month.
There are still over 1700 servicemen unaccounted for from the Vietnam War. Although American blood will forever be a part of the Southeast Asian country-side, we owe it to these brave men and women to never stop looking "Until They are Home."
Source: Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command