Punchbowl unknowns

An issue we have been looking into for the past several months is the so-called List of 239. This list refers to 239 men whose names were on both the alphabetical roster returned by the North Koreans during Operation Glory in 1954, and PMKOR, the official list of men still missing from the Korean War.

The point at issue has been whether these 239 missing men are among those buried at the Punchbowl Cemetery in Hawaii. DPMO analysts responded to our inquiries with a white paper on the subject, which essentially explained that they are not.

The white paper then raised the question: If these men are not buried in Hawaii, but their names were provided by the North Koreans, where are the men … or their remains … and how did the North Koreans get the names of 239 men who remain unaccounted for? The obvious concern is that they had the men and have not accounted for them. This could be due to inadvertent error, or it could be an intentional scheme to hide the fact that they had certain men and were not returning them.

So, we asked DPMO and CILHI analysts what is known about the fate of these 239 men. We received a letter from DPMO stating that these men are known from other sources to have died, even though their remains were not among those returned during Operation Glory by the North Koreans. We asked for an explanation of what information the analysts used to support this statement. We were told that, for most of these men, there were reports of death made by other POWs. However, the fates of six of these men have not been explained.

The North Koreans said that the remains of the six men were among those being returned in 1954, but they were not. No one has reported that these men died anywhere, under any circumstances. So where are they? How did the North Koreans get their names? These six cases need to be pursued with the Chinese and the North Koreans.

As we looked into this question of the 239 missing men, whose names were given by the North Koreans during Operation Glory, we learned that the families of these men had not been told that their loved ones’ names had been incorrectly associated by the North Koreans with remains now buried as unknowns at the Punchbowl in Hawaii. We asked DPMO to notify these families of this information. DPMO reports that, in February, such a letter was sent out to those families with whom the services have contact.

This issue provides a good example of the benefit of cooperative efforts between the families and the government agencies working to account for missing servicemen. Our unanswered questions often lead them to probe further; to check for details they had not thought to consider. Our insistence that they pursue matters they were not otherwise going to pursue, sometimes leads them to additional pieces of the puzzle. DPMO and CILHI have both been responsive to our inquiries on the 239 issue. They have been helpful in providing answers to the questions we have continued to raise, and we appreciate their willingness to address our concerns.

We intend to verify the reports of death that underlie the explanations given as to the fate of most of the 239 men whose names were associated incorrectly with Punchbowl remains. We will also continue to press for information about the six men whose fates have not been explained at all.