Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command

The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) is a joint task force within the United States Department of Defense (DOD) whose mission is to account for Americans who are listed as Prisoners Of War (POW), or Missing In Action (MIA), from all past wars and conflicts. It has been especially visible in conjunction with the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue. The mission of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) is to achieve the fullest possible accounting of all Americans missing as a result of the nation's past conflicts.” The motto of JPAC is “Until they are home”.

Structure

JPAC is a standing joint task force within the United States Pacific Command. Its headquarters is located at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii. In DOD terminology, “joint” means the organization comprises members from two or more Military Departments (Army, Navy,or Air Force).

JPAC maintains three permanent overseas detachments and two local detachments devoted to the ongoing tasks of POW/MIA accounting. Each detachment is under the command of a field grade officer of the United States armed forces.

• Detachment 1 – Bangkok, Thailand (American Embassy in Thailand)
• Detachment 2 – Hanoi, Vietnam
• Detachment 3 – Vientiane, Laos
• Detachment 4 – Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Oahu, Hawaii; this detachment is the home base of the recovery teams when they are not deployed
• HQ Detachment – Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Oahu, Hawaii; this detachment is responsible for the day to day administrative operation of the command
• The laboratory portion of JPAC is referred to as the Central Identification Laboratory (CIL).

JPAC is commanded by a flag officer (formerly U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Donna L. Crisp; currently Army Maj. Gen. Stephen Tom (since 29 Jan 2010)). It is staffed by approximately 400 soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and Department of the Navy civilians.

History

• 1973: The DOD established the Central Identification Laboratory–Thailand to coordinate POW/MIA recovery efforts in Southeast Asia.
• 1976: The DOD established the Central Identification Laboratory–Hawaii to search for, recover, and identify missing Americans from all previous conflicts.
• 1992: The Joint Task Force–Full Accounting was established to focus on achieving the fullest possible accounting of American missing from the Vietnam War.
• 2002: DOD determined that POW/MIA recovery efforts would be best served by combining the two Central Identification Laboratories and the Joint Task Force.
• 1 October 2003: The Joint POW/MIA Accounting command was established under the auspices of the Commander, Pacific Command (CDRUSPACOM).

Operations

JPAC’s operations are divided into four areas: Analysis and Investigation, Recovery, Identification, and Closure.

Analysis and investigation

JPAC investigates leads concerning Americans who were killed in action but were never brought home. This process involves close coordination with other U.S. agencies involved in the POW/MIA issue. JPAC carries out technical negotiations and talks with representatives of foreign governments around the world in order to ensure positive in-country conditions are maintained or created for JPAC investigative and recovery operations wherever JPAC teams deploy in the world. If enough evidence is found, a site will be recommended for recovery.

Recovery

Laotians hired to assist U.S. troops sift then move tons of dirt on a mountain near Xepon, Laos (July 2004). This particular mission involved searching for the human remains of two F-4 Phantom crewmen who crashed after a bombing run over Vietnam.

United Nations Command (UNC) honor guard members receive remains from Korean People's Army soldiers at the Joint Security Area

JPAC has 18 Recovery Teams whose members travel throughout the world to recover missing from past wars. A typical recovery team is made up of 10 to 14 people, led by a team leader and a forensic anthropologist. Other members of the team typically include a team sergeant, linguist, medic, life support technician, forensic photographer, RF systems communications technician/operator and an explosive ordnance disposal technician. Additional experts are added to the mission as needed, such as mountaineering specialists or divers.

The team carefully excavates the site and screens the soil to locate all possible remains and artifacts. In the case of an airplane crash, a recovery site may be quite large.

Once the recovery effort is completed, the team returns to Hawaii. All remains and artifacts found during the recovery operation are then transported from a U.S. military plane to JPAC’s Central Identification Laboratory.

Identification

Upon arrival at the laboratory, all remains and artifacts recovered from a site are signed over to the custody of the CIL and stored in a secure area. Forensic anthropologists carefully analyze all remains and artifacts to determine the sex, race, age at death, and height of the individual. Anthropologists may also analyze trauma caused at or near the time of death and pathological conditions of bone such as arthritis or previous healed breaks. Lab scientists use a variety of techniques to establish the identification of missing Americans, including analysis of skeletal and dental remains, sampling mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), and analyzing material evidence, personal effects, aviation life-support equipment (gear used by aircrew: helmets, oxygen masks, harnesses, etc.), or other military equipment.

Often, recovered military and personal equipment artifacts are forwarded to the USAF Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory (LSEL, located at Brooks City-Base, in San Antonio, TX), for advanced scientific and historical analysis. The LSEL (a highly unique scientific facility within the US and the world) is singularly qualified to scientifically study recovered military equipment artifacts and determine critical forensic aspects, to include, but not limited to: number of unaccounted for personnel represented at the loss site (i.e. 2 aviators), branch of military service represented (i.e. Navy), vehicle type represented (i.e. F-4 aircraft type), time frame represented (i.e. c. 1967), and represented levels of survivability (i.e. any evidence of fatal/non-fatal status). Frequently, the LSEL is able to provide crucial case determinations (through analysis of recovered equipment artifacts) when other critical evidence (such as human remains: bone or teeth) is not recovered or available, and/or does not yield any substantial conclusions through testing (i.e. DNA testing).

Closure

The recovery and identification process may take years to complete. In addition to the factors previously mentioned, each separate line of evidence must be examined at the CIL (bones, teeth, and material evidence) and correlated with all historical evidence. All reports undergo a thorough peer review process that includes an external review by independent experts. Additionally, if mtDNA is part of the process, the search for family reference samples for mtDNA comparison can add a significant amount of time to the identification process. Completed cases are forwarded to the appropriate service Mortuary Affairs office, whose members personally notify next-of-kin family members.

Current missions

Navy Rear Adm. Donna Crisp, commander, Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, talks with Vanuatu President Kalkot Mataskelekele at a repatriation ceremony in 2009.

JPAC conducts a number of missions each year in its ongoing efforts. The missions per year for individuals missing for each war:

• Korean War: 5 missions
• Vietnam War (including Southeast Asia): 10 missions
• World War II and the Cold War: 10 missions

In 2007 a JPAC team led by Maj. Sean Stinchon visited Iō-tō (formerly Iwo Jima) to hunt for the remains of Marine Sergeant Bill Genaust. He was the Marine combat photographer (motion picture cameraman) who was standing next to Joe Rosenthal, who filmed the Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima during the World War II invasion of the island. The team identified two possible cave entrances that may contain Genaust's remains. The JPAC team hopes to return and properly search the tunnels to possibly locate the remains of Sergeant Genaust, and those of other unaccounted for Marines.

Still missing

U.S. Navy divers working with JPAC plant an American flag on the site of a crashed WWII aircraft in the South Pacific

As of 4 December 2012:

• World War II: 73,677
• Korean War: 7,938
• Vietnam War: 1,655
• Cold War: 126
• Iraq and other conflicts: 6
• Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan War): 1 – Sergeant Bowe R. Bergdahl

See also

• Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office
• Vietnam War POW/MIA issue
• National League of Families
• List of United States servicemembers and civilians missing in action during the Vietnam War (1961-65)
• List of United States servicemembers and civilians missing in action during the Vietnam War (1966–67)
• List of United States servicemembers and civilians missing in action during the Vietnam War (1968–69)
• List of United States servicemembers and civilians missing in action during the Vietnam War (1970–71)
• List of United States servicemembers and civilians missing in action during the Vietnam War (1972–75)

Sources

• Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command
• PDF brochure for Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, 2006 
• Snyder, Rachel Louise (February/March 2005). "MIA: A search begun in a Washington, D.C., boardinghouse 140 years ago continues today as a $100-million-a-year effort to reunite the U.S. military and American families with their missing soldiers". American Heritage 56 (1). 
• Mather, Paul D. (1994). M.I.A.: accounting for the missing in Southeast Asia. National Defense University Press. ISBN 9780160363917. LCCN DS559.8. 

External links

• "The Vietnam-Era Prisoner-of-War/Missing-in-Action Database". Library of Congress. November 2012. 
• Army & Air Force Hometown News Video Story (video), YouTube