Abstract
This chapter, which establishes the foundation for the accounting program’s four inter-connected elements (locate, recover, identify, and return), provides the sociopolitical context, terminology, statistics, jargon, acronyms, as well as an overview of the organizations in and out of government that shape the accounting program.
In this chapter, Dr. Cole covers the issues of unrecovered remains, unidentified remains buried as unknowns in America’s national cemeteries, as well as recovered remains that cannot be identified using current scientific techniques.
Relying on primary source documentation including reports produced within the accounting community, Dr. Cole reveals the fact that the accounting program’s efforts to locate the remains of missing American service members have been a comprehensive failure for decades. Were it not for discoveries made by accident by third parties unrelated to any programmed acvitity, the ability to analyze small amounts of bone using DNA technology, and disinterments for the purpose of identification, the accounting program would have ground to a halt long ago.
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- 1.
Ten Basic Points Concerning Human Remains Scenes (OR, Why the Police Need Anthropologists), Stephen P. Nawrocki, Ph.D., D.A.B.F.A, University of Indianapolis Archaeology & Forensic Laboratory, 1999, updated June 27, 2006, p. 1. http://archlab.uindy.edu/documents/TenPoints.pdf. Used with permission.
- 2.
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, Drew Gilpin Faust (New York: Knopf Publishers, 2008), from the preface, “The Work of Death.”
- 3.
An excellent, perhaps the best, description of the origins of the US government’s commitment to recover and identify America’s war dead is This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War , op. cit.
- 4.
The War Department, which was created in 1789, was replaced by the Department of Defense (DoD) in 1947.
- 5.
A DoD Executive Agent is a DoD Component that has been assigned specific responsibilities, functions, and authorities to provide support, services, or other designated activities to two or more DoD Components.
- 6.
A contemporary description of DoD’s mortuary affairs program is found in Department of Defense Directive 1300.22, Mortuary Affairs Policy, October 30, 2015. http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/130022p.pdf
- 7.
“A Curious Trade: The Recovery and Repatriation of U.S. Missing In Action from the Vietnam War,” Sarah Wagner , Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2015, p. 168.
- 8.
“Rest in Peace? Bringing Home U.S. War Dead,” Drew Lindsay, history.net, September 18, 2012. http://www.historynet.com/rest-in-peace-bringing-home-u-s-war-dead.htm
- 9.
“Rest in Peace? Bringing Home U.S. War Dead,” op. cit.
- 10.
A US Army film of Graves Registration Service activities in WWII is found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mmC1WQKjC4
- 11.
“The Unburied Dead” Estella Weiss-Krejci, in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial, edited by Sarah Tarlow and Liv Nilsson Stutz (Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 289.
- 12.
House Hearing Report, December 13, 1976, p. 168.
- 13.
POW/MIA Affairs: Issues Related to the Identification of Human Remains From the Vietnam Conflict, (Washington, DC: Government Accountability Office, NSIAD 93-7, October 1992), p. 58.
- 14.
“The Unburied Dead,” op. cit., p. 289.
- 15.
According to the Kübler-Ross model, the five states of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
- 16.
The King of the Dead allowed Orpheus to retrieve Eurydice on the condition that Orpheus would not look at Eurydice’s face before returning to the land of the living. At the mouth of the cave, mere steps away from the surface, Orpheus turned to look at Eurydice which caused him to lose her forever.
- 17.
In contrast to another popular myth, there is no such thing as a “positive” identification. An identification is absolute, not conditional. “Believed to be” is not a form of identification. In the US military, the term “positive identification” is used in the context of determining whether an aircraft is a friend or foe.
- 18.
DPMO, the agency responsible for compiling the official lists of the missing, carries an identified case as missing until the PNOK accepts the identification. DPMO’s policy, which is a variation of Schrödinger’s cat, allows an American serviceman to be simultaneously identified and missing. Note that changes to this policy may have occurred after this chapter was written.
- 19.
POW/MIA Affairs: Issues Related to the Identification of Human Remains From the Vietnam Conflict, op. cit., p. 56.
- 20.
House Select Committee on Missing Persons in Southeast Asia, The Vietnam-Era Prisoner-of-War/Missing-in-Action Database, Final Report, December 13, 1976, pp. 209–210.
- 21.
“Skeleton Keys: How Forensic Anthropologists Identify Victims and Solve Crimes,” Heather Walsh-Haney, Science, June 7, 2002. http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2002/06/skeleton-keys-how-forensic-anthropologists-identify-victims-and-solve-crimes
- 22.
House Select Committee, Final Report, December 13, 1976, op. cit., p. 170.
- 23.
Disinterment for the purpose of identification is, at worst, grave desecration, not grave robbing. Desecration is the destruction of the grave, which is inherent to archaeological digs. Grave robbing is the act of stealing the corpse and other items of value from the grave. Opposition to the disinterment for the purpose of identification program is discussed in detail in Volume II of this book.
- 24.
“National Cemeteries and Memorials in Global Conflict,” Edward Steere, Quartermaster Review, November–December 1953 (http://www.qmfound.com/national_cemeteries_and_memorials_in_global_conflict.htm). This article contains the identification rates for the US Civil War , the Spanish-American War , WWI, and WWII.
- 25.
Due to a lack of documentation, a similar estimate of the number of Confederate dead who were not identified cannot be made with any meaningful accuracy.
- 26.
U.S. Department of Defense (Skyhorse Publishing), December 13, 2013. The updated version of the DoD dictionary, Joint Publication 1-02, November 8, 2010 (as amended through June 15, 2015), does not include a definition of “missing” or “missing in action.”
- 27.
House Select Committee, final report, December 13, 1976, op. cit., p. 240.
- 28.
Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) and Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) of South Vietnam.
- 29.
House Select Committee, Final Report, December 13, 1976, op. cit., pp. 198–9.
- 30.
House Select Committee, Final Report, December 13, 1976, op. cit., p. 233. Emphasis added.
- 31.
The provisions of the Missing Persons Act did not apply to servicemen determined to be AWOL.
- 32.
The New Law On Department of Defense Personnel Missing As A Result of Hostile Action, Major Pamela M Stahl, US Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps, A Thesis Presented to the Judge Advocate General’s School, April 1996, pp. 50–51. http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a444429.pdf
- 33.
House Select Committee, Final Report, December 13, 1976, op. cit., p. 168.
- 34.
The National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2010 converted all unresolved POW and MIA cases into “missing persons.”
- 35.
House Select Committee Hearing, Final Report, op. cit., December 13, 1976, p. 209.
- 36.
March 14, 2008.
- 37.
DoDI 3001.03, op. cit., p. Enclosure 5, pp. 19–20.
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Cole, P.M. (2018). The Accounting Program: Locate, Recover, Identify, and Return. In: POW/MIA Accounting. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7128-7_2
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