2000 Press Releases

MIA Repatriation Ceremony To Be Held

4/19/2000

JTF-FA DETACHMENT 2, HANOI – Six sets of remains believed to be those of unaccounted-for U.S. servicemen from the war in Southeast Asia are scheduled to be repatriated to the United States in a ceremony to be held at Hanoi’s Noi Bai International Airport on Tuesday morning, April 25.

The remains were recovered by a team of 112 mostly Hawaii-based military and civilian specialists who were deployed to Vietnam in February and March. Thirty-two cases involving potential aircraft and ground losses were investigated during the 30-day operation, and eight sites were excavated.

Since 1973, 554 American service members, formerly listed as unaccounted-for, have been recovered, identified and returned to their families. There are currently 2,029 Americans still unaccounted-for from the war in Southeast Asia, 1,519 in Vietnam.

The repatriation ceremony is a solemn ceremony in which remains are signed over from the Vietnamese Government to the Commander of Joint Task Force-Full Accounting’s Detachment 2. The remains are then ceremoniously placed into transfer cases by an honor guard consisting of personnel from all four U.S. military services. The cases are draped with a U.S. Flag before being loaded onto an Air Force strategic aircraft for the long trip back to the United States.

The remains will be flown from Hanoi to Andersen AFB, Guam, where another repatriation ceremony will be held to signify their return to U.S. soil. Upon arriving at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, the remains will receive honors and be transported to the U.S. Army’s Central Identification Laboratory-Hawaii for forensic identification analysis.