Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command
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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 all United States prisoners of war (POW) and missing in action (MIA) from all past wars. “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.”[1] The motto of JPAC is “Until they are home”.
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[edit] Structure
JPAC is a standing joint task force within the United States Pacific Command. Its headquarters is located at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii. In DOD terminology, “joint” means the organization comprises members from two or more branches of the military.
JPAC maintains three permanent overseas detachments and one local detachment devoted to the ongoing tasks of POW/MIA accounting. Each detachment is under the command of a lieutenant colonel of the U.S. Army.
- Detachment 1 – Bangkok, Thailand
- Detachment 2 – Hanoi, Vietnam
- Detachment 3 – Vientiane, Laos
- Detachment 4 – Camp H. M. Smith, Oahu, Hawaii. This detachment is the home base of the recovery teams when they are not deployed.
JPAC is commanded by a flag officer and is staffed by approximately 400 soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and Department of the Navy civilians. The laboratory portion of JPAC, referred to as the Central Identification Laboratory (CIL), is the largest forensic anthropology laboratory in the world.
[edit] 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.
- 1997: 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.
- October 1, 2003: The Joint POW/MIA Accounting command was established under the auspices of the Commander, Pacific Command (CDRUSPACOM).
[edit] Operations
JPAC’s operations are divided into four areas: Analysis and Investigation, Recovery, Identification, and Closure.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Recovery
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, 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.
[edit] 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 and life-support equipment.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Current Missions
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
[edit] Still Missing
- World War II: There are still 78,000 Americans missing from World War II, of which 35,000 are considered recoverable if locations could be identified. The remaining 43,000 are lost at sea or entombed in sunken vessels.
- Korean War: 8,100
- Vietnam War: 1,800
- Cold War: 120
- Gulf War: 1
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.jpac.pacom.mil/eBrochure.htm JPAC mission statement
