Chattanooga: Missing service members’ biggest enemy: time

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Posted at 10:30 on Monday 21 July 2008 by POW/MIA Chairman in General News

Chattanooga Times Free Press - Chattanooga, TN, USA

Monday, July 21, 2008
Chattanooga: Missing service members’ biggest enemy: time

By: Lauren Gregory

Sgt. John Hershel White’s remains came home from Korea last week after 58 years, and he may be among the last of that war’s missing soldiers to be identified.

The window of opportunity to bring lost service members home is closing, said Jo Anne Shirley, board chairwoman of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia.

“The further away you get from the conflict, the less people are interested,” said the Dalton, Ga., resident, who has been looking for information about her brother, Air Force flight surgeon Maj. Bobby Jones, since he disappeared in Vietnam in 1972. “I think we’re at a real critical stage now.”

Of the 8,156 Korean War veterans unaccounted for after the conflict ended in 1953, 8,055 still are missing, according to the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia. There are still 1,757 unaccounted for troops from the Vietnam War, and 80,693 missing during World War II, the league reports.

Sgt. White’s sister, Nina Ruth Clark, of Bryant, Ala., said she feels incredibly lucky that she was alive to contribute to her brother’s Korean War case, which concluded last weekend with a funeral and burial service in Bryant.

Though the 73-year-old provided a blood sample to the government seven years ago, she had given up on seeing any results.

“I really didn’t think it would happen in my lifetime,” she said. “It really helps, you know, to know he’s home. I still cry every day, but I figure I’ll begin to get over (my loss) now.”

Tracking Troops

Troops serving in ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are required to provide the military with blood samples to help identify their remains should something happen to them, said Larry Greer, spokesman for the Defense Department’s Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office in Arlington, Va.

The troops also are equipped with the communications technology to decrease the chances they are separated from fellow service members in the first place, he said.

But troops from previous conflicts weren’t set up for such easy tracking, he said.

So the government is left with the daunting task of locating family members generations later for DNA samples. Although DNA technology is improving, Mr. Greer said, the relatives of these long-gone people are dying or deciding to move on with their grief after so many years, making it harder to close the loop on many older cases.

Chances are the slimmest for those still buried in Southeast Asia, where the soil is especially acidic and corrosive and national leaders often are skittish about letting foreigners excavate remains, he said.

“It’s like working a detective case that may be 50 or 60 years old, and you’re keeping your fingers crossed that you can have access to the archives you need, that you can have access to witnesses you need, and that you can have access to battlefield you need,” Mr. Greer said. “We tell the families that this is like (the popular television show) ‘CSI,’ but this doesn’t get wrapped up in 20 minutes.”

Government Efforts

The Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office was established in 1993 to coordinate personnel recovery and identification efforts from past conflicts. About 600 staffers work around the globe with a budget of $105 million to $106 million a year to make it happen, Mr. Greer said.

The office begins with records of where each service member last was seen by fellow service members and other witnesses. Once a location likely to contain American remains is established, a team of anthropologists is airlifted to excavate it.

A team of negotiators lobbies for access to former enemies’ records and access to dig sites in foreign countries, Mr. Greer said.

Scientists at the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command’s Central Identification Laboratory at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, are part of the team and use various types of evidence to identify the remains, said Dr. Alec Christensen, a DNA coordinator and forensic anthropologist at the lab.

While scientists can use nuclear DNA and fingerprints in newer cases, they can’t gather that type of evidence for older cases. Instead they must rely on dental records and mitochondrial DNA, which is more plentiful and therefore easier to extract from old bones.

The DNA is processed from anonymous samples at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in Rockville, Md., then sent to the Joint POW/MIA lab for analysis and comparison to known samples from relatives.

Mitochondrial DNA, which passes directly through maternal lines, can be compared easily across several generations because, unlike nuclear DNA, it will not mutate, Dr. Christensen said.

“It isn’t the only evidence we use,” he said, “because a mitochondrial match is simply proof that the casualty could be related to that reference, not proof that that person is that particular individual.”

So a complex, meticulous investigation must be launched to look at everything from dental records to items found on or near the remains.

Civilian Participation

Mrs. Shirley says she has been frustrated with progress in her brother’s case and wonders if investigators always are as thorough as they can be.

She and her mother, Christine Jones, said they fully understand that Maj. Jones has died, and they have been able to grieve the loss and move forward with their lives. But they say they don’t want to stop until all avenues in his investigation have been exhausted.

So far, she is having trouble sustaining widespread interest in the issue. While her organization’s Washington, D.C.-based office once had seven employees, a drastic reduction in public contributions has slashed that to one.

Some families don’t want to be involved in looking for their missing loved ones, Mrs. Shirley said, perhaps because they are not ready to reopen their emotional wounds. But that doesn’t make their loved ones any less deserving of attention, she said.

“But that guy sacrificed for you and for me,” she said. “So we need to bring him home, because for him, that is a victory.”

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