Get Well Wishes to - Jane Duke Gaylor. Jane is in the Susan B. Allen Memorial Hospital for tests. She will be there till midweek. If you would like to send her a card, the address is 720 West Central, El Dorado, Kansas 67042. Or give her a call at 316-321-3300 ask for code #18. Upon release from the hospital Jane will travel to Florida to recuperate.
In our January 4th Bits 'N' Pieces we reported on North Korean defector, Mr. Kim. Kim stated he was with one American POW and two South Korean POWs for the Korean War. Mr. Kim accurately provided the name of the American and the South Koreans.
A source has informed the Alliance that the South Korean government does not believe Mr. Kim to be North Korean but rather Chinese and are deporting him back to China. We don't care what nationality Mr. Kim is. He has provided accurate information on POWs, both American and South Korean, and must remain in South Korea, until his information is thoroughly investigated. Sending him to China will put an end to any investigation. Maybe that's the idea.
Update - Cambodian Documents and Yale University - We continue to look into this matter. There is a strong indication that some of the information contained in the Wall St Journal article, cited in our January 4th edition, was in error. We will keep you advised.
The Really Good News - Senator Bob Smith (R-NH,) long a member of the U.S. Russian Joint Commission, has been appointed Chairman the Vietnam Working Group. Our efforts to learn the truth about American POWs will be greatly enhanced with Senator Smith as the head of the working group.
H.R. 409 - Needs cosponsors. This legislation would restore provisions to the Missing Service Personnel Act, gutted by the Mc Cain amendment. H.R. 409 must pass in this session of Congress. Our service personnel past, present and future need its protection. Please call or write your congress person and ask that he/she support H.R. 409. Letters may be sent care of: House of Representatives, Washington D.C. 20515. Or call them at 800-972-3524 or 202-224-3121.
As original cosponsors of H.R. 409, Congressman Ben Gilman (R-NY.), Congressmen Lee Hamilton (D-In.), Gerald Solomon (R-NY), Sam Johnson (R-Tx), Jim Talent (R-Mo.) and Paul Mc Hale (D-Pa), will no doubt be pressured by Senator Mc Cain and his ilk to water down H.R. 409. They need to know that every family member, veteran and concerned citizen supports a strong H.R. 409. Please drop these congressmen a note thanking them for their support and let them know the only acceptable changes to H.R. 409 are changes that would make the legislation stronger. These congressman are our friends. They need to know we appreciate and support their efforts.
Letters to congressmen may be sent care of: House of Representatives, Washington D.C. 20515.
On January 17th, the remains of crewmen from a World War II B-24 left China, for the final trip home. According to a Reuters story by Scott Hillis:
"A U.S. military honor guard Fridayformally took back the remains of U.S. airmen killed in World War II and sent them on their final journey home....
.....Under a crisp blue winter sky, uniformed men and women from the U.S. Army, Marine Corps and Navy placed the remains in three body-length aluminum cases and covered each with an American flag in a ceremony at Beijing's Capital Airport...
.... The oblong cases were loaded onto a U.S. C-141 Starlifter transport aircraft that was to fly the remains to the Department of Defense's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii for identification. The remains represented more than one person but it was still unknown how many individuals they belonged to, said Alan Liotta of the MIA/POW (Missing in Action/Prisoner of War) Office under the Department of Defense.
....Two local farmers discovered the wreckage of the aircraft last October after they got lost looking for wild herbs. The B-24 bomber with its 10-man crew never returned to its base in Guangxi after completing a raid on Japanese ships around Taiwan Aug. 31, 1944.....
....U.S. officials said they had made contact with all 10 families of the crewmen aboard the plane. They said the site appeared to have been untouched for more than half a century.
Stored Remains Yes, No, Maybe -- From Reuters January 15th by Jim Wolf dated January 15th
" U.S. spy agencies concluded a decade ago that Vietnam was holding back the remains of up to 600 Americans missing from the Indochina War, but officials now say that was just a rough guess and they are still trying to get to the bottom of the matter.
The intelligence agencies unanimously concluded in a recently declassified 1987 study that Hanoi was then "warehousing" between 400 and 600 sets of bones, parceling them out in a ploy designed to win long-denied normalization of ties with the United States, its wartime foe.
"We estimate that the Vietnamese have already recovered and are warehousing between 400 and 600 remains," said the study, a so-called special national intelligence estimate, one of the intelligence community's weightiest products. Titled "Hanoi and the POW/MIA issue" and prepared under President Ronald Reagan, the study was given late last year to the American Legion, the nation's biggest veterans' group, and to family members of some of the 2,134 Americans still listed as unaccounted for from the war.
But in declassifying the decade-old intelligence document under pressure from lawmakers, Clinton administration intelligence officers said subsequent evidence did not support the hypothesis that Hanoi held 400 to 600 sets of remains. "Although the Vietnamese government collected and stored remains from the Indochina War, without further research it is not possible to estimate with a high degree of certainty the number of American remains that were under Hanoi's direct control at any point in time," a companion intelligence assessment released with the 1987 study said.....
.... The Pentagon office responsible for POW/MIA issues, amplifying on the intelligence community critique of the 1987 study, said Vietnam turned over the last set of remains bearing unspecified signs of storage in 1990. "We have no hard evidence that they are still storing remains," the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office said in a written reply to queries from Reuters dated Jan. 10. "We are currently conducting a remains study with the Vietnamese in which we are seeking answers, on a case-by-case basis, on the disposition of remains which we believe they should have knowledge." Hanoi has long denied ever having withheld U.S. remains."
Hanoi's response came one day later. Again from Reuters -
"Vietnam on Thursday dismissed U.S.intelligence reports which said Hanoi might have deliberately held on to the remains of U.S. servicemen from the war in Indochina.
A foreign ministry spokesman said the allegations, contained in newly declassified intelligence documents and released in the United States, were aimed at harming relations.
"We would like to confirm that it is not true that Vietnam is holding remains of American soldiers, any such allegations are fabricated and ill-intentioned," he said, reading from a prepared statement.
The U.S. claims were made in a 1987 intelligence study which concluded that at that time Hanoi was holding back the remains of up to 600 Americans from the Vietnam War in a ploy to win long-denied normalization with its former foe. Officials with the Clinton administration have said that subsequent information did not support the report's hypothesis.
But a Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office statement made in reply to news queries earlier this month indicated that some suspicion remained. It said: "We have no hard evidence that they (the Vietnamese) are still storing remains....."
Stored Remains... Yes, No or Maybe.... What do you think?
Recently, Hazel O'Leary, Secretary of the Department of Energy, announced that a container of plutonium was left behind in Vietnam, at the conclusion of the War. Secretary O'Leary has spearheaded an effort to declassify and make public errors made by the government. She revealed the secret radiation experiments on mentally handicapped individuals conducted in the 1950's.
We suggest that Ms. O'Leary be transferred to the Department of Defense POW/MIA office. Perhaps, under her leadership the truth would be revealed and we would find out what and who else we left behind in Vietnam.
Scare tactics - Why is mortuary affairs telling family members that independent mt-DNA testing cost between $60 - $70 thousand dollars? One family was recently told that if they wish to have independent mt-DNA testing, they would not be able to have their loved one interned in Arlington. Seems the government that pays $400.00 for a toilet set, will not pay any additional transportation cost for the remains of a servicemen lost in Vietnam.
We post the following at the request of Cathy Campbell, daughter of POW/MIA William Campbell. "Wanted: Children of MIA Servicemen From the Vietnam War - January 1997 marks twenty-eight years since my father, Colonel William E. Campbell, was listed as missing in action during the Vietnam War. I had just turned 17 when we received the news of his plane being shot down over Laos. I am completing course work for a PhD in Nursing at Georgia State University and want to study how the long-term uncertainty of a MIA serviceman from the Vietnam War has affected his children. If interested in being a part of the study, please contact me: Cathy Campbell, RN, MN - 770-242-5969 (Home) nurcac@nurse.emory.edu (Email)"
They are not forgotten: Remembered by those who wear their bracelets -- Terry Alford, Gary Scull.
We haven't forgotten our promise to share information gathered on our last trip to the Library of Congress. We expect to have some of the material ready in February. Additional material will be scanned and added to our web site. If you haven't already visited the site, stop by and sign the guest book. You can find us at: http://www.nationalalliance.org
The National Alliance of Families Eighth Annual Forum is scheduled for June 19th - 21st, 1997. Once again, we will meet at the Sheraton City Center Hotel in Washington D.C. In order to make this Forum a reality, funds are needed. Please consider a contribution to The National Alliance of Families. The Alliance is registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a charitable organization. All donations are tax deductible. Contributions may be mailed to The National Alliance of Families, P.O. Box 40327, Bellevue Washington 98015-4327
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