Operation Just Cause ...for as long as it takes
POW/MIA - Last Month in Review
by Marilyn Grote
December 5-6th, 2000
Important US-Lao POW/MIA consultations took place in Vientiane. Led by JTF-FA Commander BG Harry Axson, the talks were held to follow-up the ten-year assessment conducted in Hawaii in early September. The results appear to be positive. The Lao agreed to further increase the number of US personnel participating in joint field operations, thus raising from 40 to 50 the team size, enabling the US to field a fifth ten-person team. They also agreed to extend the time in-country by excluding preparation and departure requirements, plus extend the normal 30-day work period, if needed to complete case recovery.
December 17, 2000
RELATIVES of 100 British servicemen believed to have been captured during the Korean War are calling on the Government to re-open investigations into their disappearance. A veterans' group is to demand the truth about the missing personnel following the announcement last week that Britain is to establish diplomatic relations with North Korea for the first time.
December 18, 2000
The main opposition Grand National Party (GNP) yesterday blasted the government for failing to convey a parliamentary resolution on the speedy repatriation of South Korean prisoners of war (POWs) and abductees during the just-ended fourth round of inter-Korean ministerial talks in Pyongyang. In a statement, the GNP urged the government to map out a comprehensive set of measures to bring the POWs and abductees back home as soon as possible, warning against the North's strategy to tie the issue to the provision of electricity.
December 19, 2000
A former Indiana family is preparing to bury their son, more than three decades after his helicopter crashed in Vietnam. Lester and Margaret Padgett will bury their only child, David, this spring at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C. David Padgett was just 24 years old and a major in the Army when the aircraft he was piloting went down Feb. 6, 1969, killing him and his crew of six. His remains were only recently identified using dental records.
December 20, 2000
Pentagon officials have renewed a request to North Korea for access to four Americans who deserted the U.S. Army in South Korea during the 1960s and are living in the communist North.
December 20, 2000
During the 1955-56 negotiations on restoring Russo-Japanese relations, the now-defunct Soviet Union used Japanese prisoners of war as political hostages, according to Japanese diplomatic documents declassified Tuesday. The Japanese government urged the Soviet Union to release the POWs on humanitarian grounds. But it was overpowered in negotiations by the Soviet Union, which took advantage of its hold of the POWs. Diplomatic experts say it is unusual for Japanese documents that clearly state the Soviet Union used POWs as leverage to be made public.
December 20, 2000
U.S. and North Korean negotiators have reached an agreement for 2001 under which joint teams will recover the remains of Americans missing in action from the Korean War, marking the sixth consecutive year that the United States will conduct remains recovery operations in North Korea.
December 21, 2000
Pentagon officials have renewed a request to North Korea for access to four Americans who deserted the U.S. Army in South Korea during the 1960s and are living in the communist North.
The request was made during talks last week in Malaysia between U.S. and North Korean officials negotiating an agreement on access to former Korean War battlefields where the Pentagon hopes to recover soldiers' remains.
December 21, 2000
Mason Yarbrough died fighting the Japanese on a tiny Pacific island in 1942, but the only thing that came home to his parents was his footlocker. Florence and James Yarbrough bought a burial plot for their son in Sikeston, Mo., but never had a funeral. For years after Mason's death, if Florence Yarbrough saw a serviceman in a crowd, she would study the stranger for a moment, looking for familiar signs of a young man with black hair and blue eyes -- the handsome face found in their photo album at home. She never found him.
Before her death in 1978, she asked four surviving children to bring their brother home. Thanks to the aid of strangers and the skill of forensics experts -- and against the steepest of odds -- the family is doing just that. Mason Yarbrough has come home for that funeral.
