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March 29,2001
Search
Deal
This
light will shine til ALL the pow/mias are home.
These
roses are a gift from my wife Lynn.
My patriotic centaurs
came from Centaur
World.
"LET'S BRING THEM
HOME!" This is my adopted
POW/MIA Name: Richard Wilson,
Jr. Rank/Branch: E3/US Army Unit: 523rd
Transportation Company, 37th Battalion, 26th GSG Date of Birth: November
8,1952 Home City of Record:
Crawfordsville AR Date of Loss: June
14,1971 Country of Loss: South
Vietnam Loss Coordinates: 16323N
1072729E (YD623301) Status (in 1973):
Killed/Body Not Recovered Category: 4 Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground:
Truck Other Personnel in
incident: (none missing) SYNOPSIS: PFC Richard
Wilson served as a truck driver for the 523rd Transportation
Company in South Vietnam. On June 15,1971, at about 1655 hours,
his truck went out of control while crossing the An Lo bridge
about 5 miles southeast of Hue, in a rainstorm,and veered off the
bridge. On June 17, divers
inspected the truck and were unable to locate PFC Wilson. On June
20, the truck was recovered, but no trace could be found of PFC
Wilson in the truck cab. On or about June 20, the
Vietnamese news reported seeing a body similar to that of PFC
Wilson downstream from the bridge in the river. Efforts to
relocate the body referred to were unsuccessful. A later source
report described a black body (Wilson was a negro) floating in a
flooded river in the Van Xuan Hamlet of Thua Thien Province,
South Vietnam. This report possibly correlates to Wilson, but the
body was not located. Extensive air searches
were made with the assistance of ARVN helicopters, but no sign of
Wilson or his body were ever found. Wilson's is one of the
unfortunate accidental deaths that occur wherever people are. The
fact that he died an accidental death in the midst of war is
tragically ironic. He is listed among the missing with honor,
because his body was never found to be returned to the country he
served. Others who are missing
do not have such clear cut cases. Some were know captives; some
were photographed as they were led by their guards. Some were in
radio contact with search teams, while others simply disappeared. Since the war ended,
over 250,000 interviews have been conducted with those who claim
to know about missing Americans in Southeast Asia, and several
million documents have been studied. U. S. Government experts
cannot seem to agree whether Americans are there alive or not.
Distractors say it would be far too politically difficult to
bring the men they believe to be alive home, and the U. S. is
content to negotiate for remains. Over 1000 eye-witness
reports of living American prisoners were recieved by 1989,
lending credence to the possibility that Americans are still
alive. Most of these reports are classified. If, as the U.S.
seems to believe, the men are all dead, why the secrecy after so
may years? If the men are alive,
why are they not home? "All
Biographical and loss information on Vietnam Era POW/MIA's
provided by Operation Just Cause have been supplied by Chuck and
Mary Schantag of POW/NET http://www.asde.com/~pownet/ . Please check with POW/NET regularly
for upates." I believe we
have the Right and Responsibility to Demand and Recieve a True
and Complete Accounting of our POW/MIA. I will do
whatever I can to promote that belief.
Remains Returned Since Homecoming, January 27,1973
Walter Hugh "Wally" Moons' Dedication Page James William Holts' Dedication Page Harold George Bennetts' Dedication Page John Daniel Shewmake Sr.'s Dedication Page Donald Eugene Parsons' Dedication Page James Larry Phipps' Dedication Page
Please take a
few minutes to sign my guestbook before you leave so I will know
you were here.
U.S.-North Korea Agree to Look for U.S. MIAs
A U.N. honor guard salutes U.N. flag- draped coffins containing
the remains of what are believed to be six American soldiers at
the border village of the Panmunjom, South Korea, on May 14,
1999. North Korea returned the remains of the soldiers. (Ahn
Young-joon/AP Photo)
By Robert Burns
The Associated Press
W A S H I N G T O N, June 9 — The United States and North
Korea agreed today to resume a joint effort to locate and recover
the remains of thousands of American servicemen who are
unaccounted for from the Korean War.
The agreement was struck on the third day of negotiations in
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, between representatives of the Defense
Department and the North Korean People’s Liberation Army,
U.S. officials said.
The first search mission is scheduled for June 25, the 50th
anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War.
The deal comes as final preparations are under way in the North
Korean capital, Pyongyang, for a summit meeting starting Monday
between South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean
leader Kim Jong Il.
Five Excavations
The United States and North Korea agreed to a series of five
excavations in Unsan and Kujang counties, about 60 miles north of
Pyongyang.
The Pentagon believes more than 500 sets of remains could be
recovered near Unsan, a site of major battles between the U.S.
Army’s 8th Cavalry Regiment and Chinese troops in November
1950.
By the Pentagon’s count, 8,174 U.S. servicemen are
unaccounted for from the Korean War, which began June 25, 1950,
with a North Korean invasion that nearly drove responding U.S.
troops off the peninsula.
Under terms of the deal struck today in Kuala Lumpur, the United
States will be allowed 20 people on its search teams. Each
mission will last 25 days. In its initial announcement of the
deal, the Pentagon made no mention of what has been one of the
stickiest issues: the amount of financial compensation to be paid
to North Korea.
42 Sets of Remains Recovered
For many years after the war ended in 1953 the United States had
no means of recovering remains north of the Demilitarized Zone
that was established to divide the capitalist South from the
communist North. But in the early 1990s, North Korea began
unilateral returns of a small number of remains, and later it
negotiated terms of cooperation on joint recovery missions, the
first of which was conducted in 1996.
In a series of 12 recovery operations inside North Korea since
then, 42 sets of remains believed to be those of American
soldiers were recovered, although only three have been positively
identified by the Army’s Central Identification Laboratory.
The searches were halted in November 1999 and a subsequent round
of talks in December broke off when North Korea demanded new
American humanitarian donations, including the construction of
factories to produce children’s clothing.
Kuala Lumpur was chosen as a neutral venue for this week’s
meeting. Previous rounds were held in Hawaii, New York and
Berlin.
Copyright 2000 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed.
