December 2008
A lot has happened this year and we’re expecting even greater events in 2009. In passing, I’m writing a bit before the Presidential Election, at the end of October. More on that in a moment! Meanwhile, so far in 2008, Joint POW Accounting Command (JPAC) has successfully identified the remains of 17 service members from the Korean War and sent them home to their families. About 10 others have completed their laboratory work and are now being presented to families. We don’t consider an identification “done” until the family had been advised and the remains are formally accepted.
Those identified this year include both battlefield losses and POWs who died en route to permanent camps on the south bank of the Yalu River. They also include men whom our teams recovered in North Korea through 2005, and remains turned over by the North Koreans in 1990-94 and 2007. I expect the pace to pick up in 2009 for a couple of important reasons. Those identified this year were “tabled” one at a time in the main laboratory at JPAC on Hickam Air Force Base. Several of these men came from group burials, with initial examinations and “re-articulations” of the skeletal remains done on three or four tables. But then those tables had to be cleared, to enable other identifications, and the final work was done on one table, one man at a time.
Early next year, JPAC will open a new, secure, expansion facility just across the fence at Pearl Harbor. A special, temporary laboratory will be set up there, and the open room will have as many working tables as we need. Large group burials, including those from the Unsan Battlefield, the Suan Bean Camp and Suan Mining Camp, and the Chosin Reservoir area can be brought over. The temporary storage cases can be re-opened, and as many as five or six tables used to re-articulate the remains of several men. Identifications will still be done one at a time, out of respect for the men concerned, but they will follow much more rapidly, one after the next, and with no need to interrupt work as other high priority needs arise. This is a dream come true for the anthropologists at JPAC. They will still be scheduled for field work, here and there around the world. But when they return to JPAC, they know that they will have the tables they need to complete identifications already begun.
This leads to a couple of other questions. What about exhumations from the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, “the Punchbowl?” To date, 11 have been done with six identifications. The question of table space has affected this process, as well. But right now, laboratory work on the seventh man is nearing completion, and several other exhumations are planned for 2009.
The next, obvious issue, when will our recovery teams go back into North Korea? This question has not been forgotten. Those who know the issue well are looking at it closely. If we do return to North Korea, it may be first to the Unsan battle zone, where a previous base camp was located, but none of us knows for sure. We hope to hear more about this in 2009. Events will unfold at their own pace.
Oh, I’d mentioned elections. Friends from overseas had asked about ours, and the answer worth repeating. Our system is very unusual in that the election cycle is fixed. It happens every four years, plus a two-year mid-cycle for the House and some Senate seats. In most Parliamentary governments, elections can be called at different times, either to affirm a party in power or to replace it. Beyond that, our Electoral College system works to form clear majorities. Coalition governments among three or four parties may be common in other countries, but they are unheard of here. The upshot is that in January 2009, a new House, a refreshed Senate, and a new Administration will take up our work anew, as well as many other tasks. Ours is a nonpartisan question, ultimately it serves all Americans, so we’ll be pretty busy regardless of specific outcomes. But this is a good time to remember our new President, whoever he will be, in our prayers. Ours is a necessary task, and in the sense of doing right by service members and their families, a joyous one.