The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command's mission is to achieve the fullest possible accounting of all Americans missing as a result of the nation's past conflicts.

We will post Phil O'Brien's and Steve Thompson's updates here, as well as printing them in our newsletter. Be sure to visit JPAC's website for much more information.

For the 2007 updates

For the 2006 updates - March-June / September-December
For the 2005 updates.

June 2008:

These are iffy times, a lot is happening, not all of it is obvious, but we seem to be moving to good purpose. A little bad news first, it’s not very likely that we’ll be going into North Korea this year. It is still barely possibly, but the North Koreans have not been “playing us” in that direction. I say this because their whole world is one of hints and signals and indications. They seldom “speak” until they’re ready to “do.” Surprisingly, a couple of outside factors may be working against an invitation this year, things that have nothing to do with our recovery work in North Korea.

First, the Olympics in Beijing. Mainland China is hosting the world, China is North Korea’s “elder brother,” and there is a special relationship. North Korea will be at the Olympics, no great fanfare, just there. Sometimes North Korea feels comfortable playing on the world stage, and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s hard to play up your relative importance when you’re simply a guest, just one of 200 or so.

Second, continuing news coverage and scientific commentary on the Israeli raid that destroyed the nuclear reactor in Syria back in September 2007. No kidding! Here I’m speaking only in terms of public, academic information, but North Korean involvement in the design and construction is very widely understood. This did not go as planned. Quite beyond any U.S. interest, the World scientific community has had a great deal to say, none of it very nice. When things go wrong, as here, seniors in the North Korea government usually “tighten up” a bit on their juniors. That means that some projects, even those enjoying a lot of favor, are put on the back burner. Not for too long, just for a while. But all of that likely means a delay for us, in other words, “next year.”

Now, let’s try some good news. Our recovery teams have been working in South Korea. There are three areas of interest, and a really good chance that different teams will be working in all three. We’ve already had men walking along the so-called “Trail of Tears,” the main POW march routes (mainly from 1951) north and west across the upper end of South Korea. Even as I write, interviews and trial digs are being done. One village (we know it was a POW holding point) is of special interest. Two sets of remains were recovered from nearby in 1953, and a third set in 1993: now we’re building interview leads that, we hope, will take us to the main burials. Work in progress, I have to respect “site integrity,” so I can’t say much more than that right now. But things are happening, as we speak...

A second team will be working in South Korea along and near the Naktong Perimeter, looking for losses from August-September 1950. Battle zones along the river front have been pretty well covered, but more and more the question is one of short-term POWs, who may have died within two or three days and 10 or 20 miles. We don’t always have surviving witnesses, but we do have surviving memories, coming down to the second and third generations in families that have returned to the area. All of this is iffy, but we know that many of the men are still there, nearby, and we’re out to find them.

Finally, on recovery work, another team will be looking at some river and harbor crash sites where aircraft went down. It may still be possible to find wreckage, the searching technology has gotten a lot better. And if we do find “metal,” there is a good chance of recovering remains. It all varies, case by case, but not without hope.

Meanwhile, laboratory work continues. Of special interest to all of us, identification of SFC George Walter Koon [POW 1 December 1950, Medical/9th Infantry] and SFC Jack O. Tye [POW 27 November 1950, L/38th Infantry] has just been announced. Both men were captured during the extended battle around Kujang and Kunu-ri. But their recoveries were made just north of the Unsan battle zone, where the 8th Cavalry had fought on 2 November 1950. Here’s the story: many of the POWs from Kujang and Kunu-ri crossed through the area, just north of Unsan, en route to Pukchin-Tarigol, where they were at Christmas time, before going on to Camp 5 in 1951. Many years later, while our recovery teams were working at Unsan, our North Korean escorts allowed them to go off the edge of the battle field to do remains searches at nearby villages. The teams knew immediately that these recoveries were POWs, because they were not on the battlefield. They also knew that the men were not from the Unsan battle, because they were in different villages, not along the route that the Unsan POWs had used. From there, it all became a case of reconstructing who these men might be. Between site work, lab work, and DNA sampling, we finally settled on who two of the men were. Several companions are still in work, and all are from the Kujang and Kunu-ri battle zone.

I’m really proud of what the lab did here, it was a lot of very difficult work. But they got to the answers and they “did it right”. That’s the whole idea... best to all!

March 2008:

We do not have, just yet, an invitation from North Korea to do recovery work during 2008. It might come a little later, or not. I can’t speak to any specifics, but I haven’t given up on the possibility of “going North” later this year. Meanwhile preparations continue for work in South Korea. Our friends at the Joint POW Accounting Command (JPAC) hope to visit several areas, including the POW march routes leading north into the present Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Work there looks really promising. In just a first “road recon” last year, our JPAC team was able to recover two sets of likely remains, and this year, they’ll be able to get into some of the planting areas before new crops go in. That gives us a lot more room to work, and it gives local villagers a lot more time to talk. This is one of the things we’d hoped for, and it is proving true. Very often, we are dealing with members of the same Korean families and they still remember events from during the war. At least some of the second and third generations are not far from the original villages. True, most of these areas evacuated as enemy forces moved forward. But there were people who could not get out, and their stories are pretty well known, family by family. So we’ll have a lot to listen to and look for.

Picking up, now, on a previous story, we’re also looking much more closely at some of the Unknown burials at National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP) in Hawaii, “the Punchbowl.” There were a total of 867 burials from the Korean War. One went on to Arlington. Ten others have already been exhumed, and six of them have now been identified. The bad news is that we still cannot use DNA on bone cuts from the early Punchbowl burials to do identifications. The bone material was effectively scrubbed by the preservatives used prior to burial. But we are getting limited results with new methods, so we haven’t given up there, either.

The good news is that we’ve gotten to know these Unknowns a lot better than ever before. Some examples... Two of the burials are from the United Nations Military Cemetery (UNMC) at Inchon. We know the exact dates of original burial for both men, and we have locations and approximate dates of death. One man was likely a POW en route north, early war, from the group that followed Tiger Group in September 1950. We are trying to sort out names. The other man’s remains were pretty badly destroyed in combat, but even that gives us a “window of possibility” to work with.

Twenty-one others are from the UNMC at Masan, deep within South Korea. It was set up by the 25th Infantry Division, opened in July 1950, and had its last Unknown burials early in 1951. Now consider the numbers: early war, far south, and many of the missing men from nearby were either known or suspected POWs who worked northward before they died or disappeared. Many names can be excluded very quickly. We’re not ready to exhume anyone returned from UNMC Inchon or UNMC Masan just yet, but we are trying to “fine down” the names that are still possible. Can’t promise, but I am expecting good progress from both sites. Once again, we have a real advantage in working with Unknowns from South Korea, originally recovered by our own people, for we know exactly where and when they were found.

Now consider the other side of the coin. For those returned from North Korea during Operation Glory, it’s a lot less exact. The Chinese and North Koreans did provide location information for the human remains they passed back. We know from experience, meaning previous identifications, that sometimes they were quite truthful and accurate. And sometimes they were not. Remains coming from Camp 1, Camp 5, and the Chosin Reservoir battle zone, including the temporary cemeteries that we left behind, were typically “pretty close.” The Chinese and North Koreans often got individual names wrong, but they weren’t too concerned with that. At least they got the locations right.

But there’s another case where the Chinese and North Koreans just about “got it all wrong.” We opened a large, temporary cemetery at Pyongyang, North Korea. Then we had to leave the burials behind in December 1950 as allied forces fell back. UNMC Pyongyang contained around 650 U.S. and allied burials. When the Chinese and North Koreans returned human remains during Operation Glory, in September and November 1954, they claimed that 439 of the caskets held remains from Pyongyang. Our people at Kokura, Japan, worked on these remains, and identified many of them. So far, so good. But they were also able to positively identify dozens of others, reported from field burials around western North Korea, who were actually from the Pyongyang cemetery. We know, because we had buried them by name, and these remains “matched up.” So, at a given point, it was very obvious that someone among the Chinese and North Koreans was playing an ugly little game.

Our best belief, right now, is that UNMC Pyongyang was exhumed completely, except perhaps for one isolated plot containing six graves. It had been part of the main cemetery, but was separated from the other rows by an open area reserved for those still falling in daily combat. Most of the open area was not used, and, quite plausibly, the Chinese and North Koreans never discovered the final six men. We can say this reasonably because there were identifications from every other plot and row within the cemetery. Our task now is to reconstruct which Americans, originally buried at Pyongyang but later wrongly cited from elsewhere, are among the Unknowns at NMCP in Hawaii. We believe that 52 of 58 by-name burials from Pyongyang are now in the Punchbowl. The other six are from that isolated row, and were likely missed, but we’re checking for them, as well. This is “needle in a haystack” work, because were having to go over the burial records for every one of the North Korean returns. But it’s worth doing, and the process is very rewarding. Here again, we’re not yet ready to start exhuming, but as lists of possible names get shorter and shorter, we will be.