Posted on: Monday, January 7, 2002

Search resumes for war dead

Advertiser Staff

The start of the New Year marks the start of new efforts by Joint Task Force-Full Accounting, based at Camp Smith, and the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory, Hawai'i, to recover the remains of missing service members.

About 100 people will deploy this week on the 68th Joint Field Activity to Vietnam to recover service members from four crash sites and two isolated burial grounds. Team members will begin work on recovery operations in six Vietnamese provinces.

Next week, meanwhile, teams from the Central Identification Laboratory, based at Hickam Air Force Base, will leave for Kwajalein, Panama and Papua New Guinea. The Kwajalein team will attempt to recover the remains of nine Marines executed by the Japanese in October 1942.

The Panama team will excavate a site where an O-47 disappeared in the jungle in June 1941, and in New Guinea, 10-person teams will deploy to the Lae and Wewak regions to search for the remains of pilots and air crews lost in 1943 and 1944.