US Agency finds remains of missing soldiers, decades later
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In the United States, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) continues to locate and identify the remains of American soldiers missing in action, sometimes decades after their deaths.
A woman recently met her father for the first time, after the DPAA recovered and identified his remains from a 1970 crash in Vietnam. He was a US Air Force officer who died while serving in the Vietnam War and never met his daughter.
The DPAA receives approximately 30 to 40 sets of unidentified remains each month at its Hawaii laboratory. Identifying these individuals is a complex process, requiring examination of DNA, old records of injuries, and even traces of diet from bone analysis. The agency searches for remains in diverse and challenging environments, from Southeast Asian rice paddies to the Himalayan mountains. Researchers often rely on details from the past to confirm identities.
In one case, they matched bone fractures to a letter a mother wrote to the US military in 1955, detailing injuries her son suffered as a child. The DPAA has identified 110 US soldiers from remains repatriated from North Korea in 2018 and believes more identifications are possible. They hope to resume cooperative excavation work in North Korea if diplomatic talks progress, focusing on areas where many American soldiers went missing during the Korean War.
