Today (Friday) is POW/MIA Day and a native Iowan is trying to help identify the recovered remains of soldiers who may be from the Hawkeye State. Lieutenant Colonel Mark Brown is a native of Brunsville, Iowa and now works as the public affairs director for the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command — the group in Hawaii that seeks to identify the remains of soldiers from all military branches.
Brown says there are 25 soldiers from the Korean War they think may be from Iowa, and he is looking for a female relative to provide D-N-A for testing. He says they’ve gone to Korea and brought back the remains from areas where Iowans were fighting. Brown says the parents may not be alive, but a sister or niece or another female member of the family may be able to help out.
Brown says you can go to:www.jpac.pacom.mil to see if you may have a relative on the list. Brown says once they have the D-N-A sample, they can try and match it to the remains and identify the soldier. He says the D-N-A is sent to Washington, D.C. and it can take two months or years to test and make a positive identification of the remains.
Brown says they hope to get a match in as short a time as possible. Part of Brown’s job is to call families and tell them about their relatives. Brown says it’s very rewarding, as he’s found the identity of relatives of three soldiers. He says the family first thinks he’s a telemarketer, but then they realize it’s a real call and he may be able to help them. Brown says there are still many soldiers who have never been found.
Brown says there are 88-thousand missing soldiers nationwide, with 78-thousand of them from World War Two, 81-hundred from Korea, 18-hundred from Vietnam and 124 from the cold war. Brown will leave his current post next summer and says he would like to find the identities of the Iowans before he’s done.
Related web sites:
Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command