How to Become Active in the POW/MIA Issue

The American Association of Retired Persons, better known as AARP, currently has a media campaign running on all major television networks and in nationally distributed magazines. In one commercial, a housewife picks up the telephone, calls the White House and asks to speak with the President. When he answers the phone, she asks the President of the United States if he would ensure Social Security solvency. He answers "Sure!" She thanks the President and hangs up the telephone. This is followed by the announcer stating, "if you could do this, you wouldn't need AARP". This commercial clearly explains the need for membership and involvement in the Coalition of Families. IF, individually, we could resolve our own missing cases, there would be no need for family organizations.

I've met so many wonderful family members along my personal journey searching for my father, an F-84 pilot shot down over North Korea on March 3, 1952. Most of the people I speak with tell me they wouldn't know how to become active in the POW/MIA issue. Many have expressed to me they don't feel qualified or knowledgeable to work on the issue. Whether you realize it or not, the moment you came into contact with your casualty office about your missing loved one, you became actively involved.

Active involvement in the POW/MIA issue begins in each one of us when we said to ourselves, "I want to know what really happened, and I wish to be able to bring him home." These questions and unresolved issues are all the requirements you need in order to begin to become involved. As one of the founding board members of the Coalition of Families, I began my involvement in the POW/MIA issue just like everyone else. Each of us had the desire to find out what caused our loved ones to become missing.

Growing up, my mother and grandparents told my sister and me numerous facts about our father's loss. But we still had questions and many unresolved issues. From the time of his loss in 1952 until 1990, we did not know where to find answers to our questions. Additionally, all government doors were basically closed to Korean and Cold war families. The Viet Nam war and the families of missing Viet Nam servicemen changed the way our government had previously accounted for missing service personnel. However, despite all of the changes, all government aid and assistance for the families was for those missing from the Viet Nam war only. With the passage of the Freedom of Information Act, families of missing service personnel from wars prior to the Viet Nam war, found a crack in the door to government bureaucracy.

In 1990, Congress established the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. Initially, these open hearings were created to ensure that our nation met its obligation to the missing and the families of those still listed as unaccounted for from the war in Southeast Asia. It quickly expanded to include the Korean and Cold war. The hearings were televised on C-Span, and it was announced there would be two days of testimony dedicated solely for the Korean and Cold war. My husband and I quickly made arrangements to attend the hearings in Washington, D.C. At the same time, I contacted my senator's office asking for assistance in acquiring my father's records. My trip to Washington was the first time in my life I had ever seen and read my father's casualty records. It was the first time I had ever met with a government official about my father. It was also the first time I had ever met anyone who also had a missing loved one from the Korean War.

We quietly sat through the two days of hearings. Arrangements were made to meet with a representative of Mortuary Affairs, the department responsible for the casualty records, and we exchanged pleasantries with a staff member in my senator's office. After receiving my father's casualty records, that night in our hotel room I read and reread all of the information I had received. In my naivety, I thought I would find some comfort and maybe some answers about his loss. Instead, the records only raised more questions. The next day, we attended the Senate hearings where, for the first time, I met other Korean War family members.

Meeting other families of missing Korean and Cold War servicemen was like finding a large piece of a very mixed up jigsaw puzzle. We exchanged names, phone numbers and personal information. That day, we also established ourselves with the Army personnel in attendance that became the first Director and members of the newly created Task Force Russia department within the Department of Defense.

When we all returned to our homes, we began endless telephone calls and faxes back and forth. There were some families who had been researching their loved ones' case for a long time, and others, like myself, who were just beginning. Those who had been at it the longest instructed the newcomers on the various agencies, repositories and records we should request about our loved ones. There were no DPMO officials at that time assigned to assist family members in gathering case information. In fact, there were some members of the various military agencies whom we referred to as the old military, who actually tried to dissuade us from looking further into Korean and Cold War records and cases.

There were some established family and veterans organizations, but again, their interests were the POW/MIA's missing from the Viet Nam War. It didn't take long for us to realize the need for a family organization dedicated to the families of the missing from the Korean and Cold War.

Our newly formed little group of family members immediately went to work, and boy, did we have our work cut out for us! Our first objective was to be recognized by the Defense Department and Congressional representatives. Service records and Korean and Cold War documents were scattered all over the world. The majority of Korean and Cold war records were still classified, or had been discarded over the 40+ years since the cease fire that was signed in 1953. During this same time period, North Korea was turning over remains they claimed were American servicemen killed in the Korean War. The Joint US-Russian Task Force was in its infancy. The United States and North Korea had no diplomatic relations established and there was no policy established to attempt identification of the remains North Korea had turned over. After Boris Yeltson's astounding comments made that Russia had taken American Korean War prisoners of war to the Soviet Union, it was the news media that alerted families their loved ones name appeared in documents released by the Russians. Again, the Defense Department had no policy or outreach program that would locate and notify families about the names of their loved ones being published in US newspapers.

Our little group, which consisted of several housewives, a retired police dispatcher, an office manager for a medical group, the wife of a retired naval officer, began traveling to Washington. We researched records at the National Archives, discovered there were a number of cases among the 866 graves buried as unknowns at the Punch Bowl with name association, learned that Mitachondrial DNA technology was being applied to remains jointly recovered remains from Viet Nam, that Congressional financial assistance, commonly known as "coin assist" was available to immediate family members of those missing in Viet Nam, that there was an entire department within the Department of Defense dedicated to the families and their missing loved ones from the Viet Nam War, that this agency was mandated by congress to locate and centralize Viet Nam era records, locate and recover missing Viet Nam war servicemen, use every available scientific means to identify Viet Nam war remains and return them to their families, and to assist the families of Viet Nam POW/MIA's with whatever help they needed. We also learned that none of these services, agencies or policies included Korean and Cold war families, and furthermore, there was virtually little or no interest at all in providing such to the Korean and Cold war families. For all that we didn't have, the United States government did provide us with the freedom of speech, to lobby and demand equal rights and representation!

It seems it has taken us a long time. Compared to our men who have waited over 50 years to come home, in a relatively short time, we have grown and received so much. The journey along the way has been tough, tiresome, frustrating and extremely rewarding in many, many ways. We have lost some families along the way. Some families left because they lost faith. Some family members have passed away. Some family members had family obligations that required their full attention. Some families have been fortunate enough to find closure and their loved one returned. We are all still the same housewives, active and retired, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts and uncles, simple and complicated. We still need each other. We need to work together. There are still many doors to be opened. There is so very much work that needs to be done. If you still think you can't make a difference, just remember the original little group. Because we stood up and demanded our loved ones, who fought, sacrificed and died for the United States and the United Nations, not be forgotten,, that we want to honor them and bring them home where they belong, families of Korean and Cold war POW/MIA's now have an outreach program to identify and locate surviving family members of Korean and Cold war missing. Because of our efforts, there is an on going effort to locate, centralize and declassify Korean and Cold war era records and documents. Because of our efforts, there is an established policy and effort to locate, repatriate and identify Korean and Cold war remains. Because of our efforts, there are ongoing political negotiations with Russia, countries formerly part of the Soviet Bloc, China and North Korea, to locate and research Korean and Cold war era records, former POW sites, locate and recover remains, locate and interview veterans in all countries who participated in the Korean and Cold wars. We have a Korean and a Cold war working group within the Joint US & Russian Commission. We have ongoing efforts to identify as many of the 866 unknown remains buried in the Punch Bowl Cemetery. We now have separate and annual regional updates in addition to the update in Washington, D.C. where many of you attended this past July. Many of those who attended the D.C. update used the coin assist program now available to Korean and Cold war families. If you still don't think you can make a difference in the issue, ask a veteran of the Korean or Cold War, a veteran of the WWII D-Day invasion, or a survivor of the Battan Death march, a survivor of the Chosin Reservoir campaign, a former Korean War POW, do they think they made a difference? Were their sacrifices worth it? Ask the family of one of the men whose remains have been repatriated, identified and returned to them, have the families made a difference?

You bet we have!