government to come here and recover
the remains of its servicemen. We’re
just waiting for them to approach us.’ ”
Representatives of JPAC note that
it’s a small offi ce compared to most
within the military, with limited
manpower and an annual budget of
just $50 million. Its mission, how-
ever, is huge: to locate, recover, and
identify the remains of the 88,000
servicemembers missing worldwide
from all confl icts. Of that number, an
estimated 30,000 from World War II
are considered recoverable.
“All 600 of us [within the offi ce]
are working around the world on
every possible opportunity to account
for missing Americans,” says Larry
Greer, director of public affairs, De-
fense Prisoner of War/Missing Per-
sonnel Offi ce in Washington, D.C. “We
can’t be everywhere at once, so we
pursue those cases that appear to have
the greatest promise for resolution.”
Greer adds, “If [we] focused only
on World War II cases, we would fi nd
that we have many, many years of
challenges remaining in front of us.
But we can’t just focus on one war;
we have to focus on all of them at the
same time. No one confl ict is more im-
portant than another. Every service-
man who put on a uniform and went
to war deserves the same effort from
A giant transport of the First Air Com- this government to bring him home.”
mando Group hauls Chinese troops back Gary says he has nothing but admi-
from Burma over the Hump in 1944. ration for the men and women who
travel the world, often under grueling
conditions, to locate and bring back
their fallen brethren. But he and oth-
ers think servicemembers missing
from World War II should get priority.
“Many of their mourning family
members are in their 80s and 90s
and don’t have much time left,” he
explains. “Even though they are
very old, they are still very aware
and very hurt that their missing rel-
atives have not been recovered. It’s
really the government’s responsi-
bility to focus more on the families
who have waited the longest.
98 MILITARY OFFICER SEPTEMBER 2009 IMAGES: ABOVE, NATIONAL ARCHIVES; TOP, TOM WORTHINGTON II/COURTESY ALTOONA MIRROR
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