Our search for our MIA’s is an on-going effort, and at the forefront of this effort is the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC). JPAC was officially established and activated on October 1, 2003. The organization was created from the merger of the Army’s 30 year old Central Identification Laboratory and the 11-year-old Joint Task Force-Full Accounting (JTF-FA). This Command was established to combine the expertise and resources of these two organizations into one so that the DOD mission could be more effectively accomplished. Over 400 military and civilian personnel from all branches of the Armed Forces are assigned to JPAC, and their mission is to conduct global search, recovery, and laboratory operations to identify unaccounted-for Americans from past conflicts. The Command is located at Hickam AFB in Hawaii and continues the search for the Americans who remain listed as missing.
The Command maintains four permanent detachments that provide logistics and in-country support during investigation and recovery operations. These Detachments are located in Bangkok, Thailand; Hanoi, Vietnam; Vientiane, Laos; and Honolulu, Hawaii. Day-to-day operations of JPAC involve researching case files, investigating leads, excavating sites, and identifying Americans who have been killed in action.
Once a recovery mission succeeds in finding some remains of an MIA and artifacts from the site, the Central Identification Laboratory (CIL) uses its state-of-the-art facilities and forensic techniques to establish the identity of the military personnel. Based on the conclusions of the CIL, JPAC prepares an extensive report of its findings, which is given to the surviving family members of the deceased. These comprehensive reports summarize all of the actions that had been taken to investigate the conditions and locations of the disappearance, recover the remains and artifacts, and identify the MIA. Family members are given copies of these reports and the remains of the family member are returned to the family with full military honors.
JPAC and its predecessors have recovered the remains of thousands of MIA’s. We salute the efforts of JPAC to bring closure to the surviving family members of our nation’s MIA’s.