The U.S. government continues to account for Americans missing in Southeast Asia from the Vietnam War. Since late 1973, the remains of over 700 Americans killed in that war have been returned and identified. Many have been buried with full military honors in accordance with the wishes of surviving family members. Efforts continue to recover nearly 1,800 Americans who remain unaccounted-for from the conflict .
“Operation HOMECOMING,” in April 1973, marked the return of 591 POWs captured in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Although the Paris Agreement to end the war called for assistance in accounting for the missing, North Vietnam denied access to most loss sites. At that time, the U.S. listed about 1,350 Americans as prisoners of war or missing in action and sought the return of roughly 1,200 Americans reported killed in action and body not recovered.
U.S. teams conducted some very restricted searches in 1974 to account for Americans missing in South Vietnam . These met with limited success. At the same time, the work by the “Four Party Joint Military Team” resulted in the return of 23 sets of remains. These men had died in captivity in North Vietnam . The 1975 communist victories in South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia virtually halted U.S. work in the region.
Over the next decade, Vietnam returned few remains of missing Americans. In the mid-1980s, the U.S. and Vietnam increased the frequency of high-level policy and technical meetings to help resolve the POW/MIA issue. The U.S. government viewed this work as a humanitarian obligation. The Vietnamese slowly began to return American remains that they had previously collected and stored; eventually they permitted the U.S. to excavate a few crash sites.
The Lao government, with whom the USG maintained diplomatic relations, agreed to several crash-site excavations in the mid-1980s. This resulted in the return and identification of the remains of a few dozen Americans. Cambodia ’s political state of affairs did not permit in-country accounting work.
In 1988 a presidential emissary, General John Vessey, USA (Ret.), convinced the Vietnamese to permit U.S. teams to search throughout the country.
As part of an ongoing process, for over a decade the U.S. government has conducted joint field activities with Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Throughout those countries, U.S. teams investigate and excavate crash and burial sites. They interview many persons who have knowledge about loss circumstances . The U.S. government has also pressed for and obtained access to historical wartime records and archives. These often provide information relevant to the fates of missing Americans .
Working jointly, American and Vietnamese experts first focused on “Last Known Alive” (LKA) cases. These involved missing Americans who m the U.S. believed might have survived their initial loss incident. T he outcome of these investigations helps resolve the question of captive Americans remaining behind in Indochina. To date, the U.S. has identified 296 individuals as LKA in all of Southeast Asia. Following very deliberate and exhaustive investigative efforts , DoD has determined that more than 190 are deceased .
In 1992, the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting (JTF-FA) formed to expand U.S. field operations. Teams from this organization worked in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia alongside their foreign counterparts. Together, they interviewed thousands of witnesses regarding the fate of missing Americans. Their hard work resulted in the locat ion of crash and burial sites all over the region, so that the recovery elements made up primarily of Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii (CILHI) , personnel could excavate them. This work continues today under the direction of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC).
