Our Mission:
My first husband, Capt. Jerry Zimmer, was an F4B Phantom jet pilot, whose aircraft was shot down on August 29, 1969, approximately 20 miles South of Da Nang, Vietnam, after six months in country. Neither Jerry nor his navigator, 1st Lt. Al Graf, was able to eject, before the aircraft crashed into the Que Son Mountains. Initially Jerry and Al were classified as Killed in Action/No Body Recovered (KIA/NBR). Years later, both Marines were listed as MIA, along with other service members whose bodies were never recovered.
Jerry has been gone nearly a half century, and hope for recovering his remains had run out a long time ago. However, in recent years our family became involved with the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), now merged with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), and learned that Jerry’s and Al’s remains might, in fact, be recoverable, so we are doing everything possible to support their efforts to make this happen and bring our guys home where they belong.
NOTE: BLOG POSTS ARE NOT UPDATED, SO INFORMATION MAY HAVE CHANGED OVER TIME.
MIA BLAME GAME
Sean Tallman, anthropologist; Tom Holland, PhD, Scientific Director, CIL; Bob Mann, PhD, Deputy Scientific Director, CIL. This photo was taken Jan 2010, during a visit to JPAC Hawaii to learn more about the identification process.
Many of us with husbands, dads, sons and brothers still missing from past wars are outraged by the ranting that does not appear to benefit our MIAs, but rather to satisfy personal vendettas.
This blog is not meant to defend DPMO and JPAC, but to highlight ignorance of the system and destructive comments at a time when families are looking ahead. Nor is it meant to denigrate all the good people who use social media to stay connected with the MIA issue and have come to understand the difficulties that we all face in bringing home our loved ones at his point in history.
Half Baked Apology
I recently learned of a site that had published a blog focusing on people – namely within JPAC — being “fired” or likely to be “removed” when the new agency is expected to officially stand up in January 2015. Bold headlines singled out Scientific Director, Tom Holland, PhD, as being “fired” from his job as the former head of JPACs Central Identification Laboratory (CIL) at Hickam AFB in Hawaii.
Those of us who regularly report on major changes within the accounting community have made it clear to our followers that the new agency selected the office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner to assume all duties involved with MIA identifications – not surprising with the drawdown of troops in harm’s way and within the military, in general, according to the current picture. The Medical Examiner is highly qualified, and I believe he will have a lot to offer and be amazed at the enormity of the new job.
Also mentioned as being “dismissed” in the same blog were Dr. John Byrd, Director of the CIL, and his deputy Dr. William Belcher. (The blog “admin” – no byline — wrote a strange apology the following day, saying that Bryd; Belcher; along with JPAC Commander Maj Gen Kelly McKeague; and Johnie Webb, Deputy to the Commander for External Relations and Legislative Issues were “denying that they have been fired and they are correct, for now.” Not much of an apology in my books.
Not only was the reporting irresponsible, but it was filled with inaccuracies, a lack of sufficient attribution and disrespectful to people that don’t deserve that type of treatment. The writer obviously knows nothing about sequestration and its effect on identifications; budget cuts; co-mingled, stored remains treated with preservatives before finding their way to the CIL; costs involved with identification of remains not suitable for DNA, along with hundreds of other challenges faced by the lab.
DNA Rules
To say that Holland “has squandered hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and has few identifications to show for it,” was reckless. Holland was brought in more than 20 years ago, to restore faith in the system among families like mine that identifications of their loved ones were accurate beyond a reasonable doubt. The science of DNA has progressed rapidly, cutting down on the long waiting period for identifications, and the CIL has used it whenever possible.
Sometimes extracting DNA from remains is not the problem. Instead, it can be the lack of a familial reference sample – often Mitochondrial DNA. No matching DNA typically means that the lab must hold off on making an identification or use other means. Many of the WWII cases have been the toughest to identify, because the case histories lack sufficient data to locate and/or identify remains, and sometimes it takes a monumental effort to find the family of the deceased, seven decades after the occurrence.
DPMO has been heavily involved in WWII cases, along with Casualty Offices from the respective Armed Services. JPACs role, in general, has been to conduct field work associated with well-researched cases – conducting investigations, excavations and hopefully, repatriations leading to identifications. (The removal of remains of ‘Unknowns’ located in Memorial Cemeteries worldwide is not a JPAC decision, but apparently the DoD is currently working on this issue for future recoveries.)
Ignorance No Excuse
The writer said “it is widely expected” that Maj Gen McKeague and Johnie Webb, will also be removed “along with others being held responsible for failing to recover the remains of missing American service members.” Maj Gen McKeague is an active duty military officer serving a tour of duty during one of the most difficult periods in the accounting community’s history. If Maj Gen McKeague gets orders elsewhere, he will probably go but not because he failed in his job. Webb has been with the accounting community for decades, and the new agency will need people with experience to help maneuver the complexity of the system, but I have no idea where that decision stands.
Changes will occur within the accounting community, as they do in Corporate America with a merger, and those holding the short straw can be out of a job; however, decisions about who stays and who remains generally are made for the betterment of the organization – not because someone outside the system thinks that getting rid of certain people — they don’t like — will ensure success. That is naïve.
The remnants of war are not pretty — I learned that a long time ago. I have found that people ignorant of facts about battlefield deaths; ‘Unknowns’ interred globally in Memorial Cemeteries; and identifying thousands of MIAs throughout the world don’t understand what this is all about. Yet, they write with such conviction. When I was in journalism school many years ago, a professor reminded me that in non-fiction writing, 80 percent of the story involves research, and the remaining 20 percent writing. My advice to whomever is behind the blog described in this post, please spend a little more time on research and less on writing.
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