Posted on: Monday, July 16, 2001

Editorial
Diminishing returns in MIA recoveries?

There may be a freedom-of-information complaint to be found in the Pacific Command's refusal to share the results of an investigation into a helicopter crash that killed 16 people searching for the remains of servicemen killed in the Vietnam War. But there's a more important issue.

The Americans who ride those helicopters — Russian-made MI-17s, flown and maintained by Vietnamese — have expressed confidence in them.

Many of the Americans now manning Detachment 2 of Joint Task Force-Full Accounting in Hanoi call places like Mililani and Waipi'o home. They knew all or most of those who died in the helicopter crash, both the Americans and the Vietnamese. Two of them were stationed in Hawai'i: Air Force Master Sgt. Steven Moser and Sgt. 1st Class Tommy Murphy. And one of them, Senior Col. Tran Van Bien, 65, had been assisting in the search for MIAs almost since the program began.

Normally, Detachment 2 undertakes four or five joint field activities a year, each one lasting roughly 30 days, with perhaps six "digs." Because the best documented and most accessible digs have already been accomplished, the newer ones are getting increasingly difficult. Recoveries are now being made in remote areas, sometimes infested with deadly snakes in nearly vertical terrain.

Every precaution for safety, of course, is taken. But the product of Detachment 2's successful searches often isn't enough to fatten an envelope. Such remains can be identifiable in Hawai'i's Central Identification Laboratory, but an increasingly important question becomes: How much risk of life is justified in the recovery of scant and scattered remains of men dead for more than a quarter-century?

There now are fewer than 2,000 Americans unaccounted for in Southeast Asia. Compare that to the 78,000 still missing from World War II — 7,959 from D-Day alone — and 8,100 from the Korean War.

The Vietnamese have gone far out of their way in cooperating with the recovery effort, in part, certainly, because it was the only way they could achieve rapprochement with the United States. But how do the Vietnamese personally reconcile spending millions to find 2,000 Americans when at least 300,000 of their own soldiers remain missing from the war?

Part of the fierce determination to recover all the missing Americans from the Vietnam War is perhaps due to the widespread perception that they died in an unpopular and unsuccessful effort and are owed, at least, this.

The men at Detachment 2 make clear that they have no opinion on whether the continuing full-blown effort to recover remains is a good idea. They're proud and happy to be doing their duty.

But at what point do we recognize that diminishing returns fail to justify increasing costs and risks? It's time for America to face this issue squarely.