Remains Believed to Be of 7 MIAs Turned Over to U.S. by Vietnam

Vietnam on Wednesday turned over to U.S. officials human remains believed to be those of seven American servicemen listed as missing in action during the Vietnam War and documents on 14 other MIAs.

With U.S. military officers solemnly standing at attention, seven wooden boxes draped with American flags were placed aboard a U.S. Air Force C-141 transport plane at Noi Bai Airport.

The Americans also loaded a metal container of human bone fragments and flight manuals discovered during the first joint U.S.-Vietnamese excavation of a B-52 bomber crash site. The excavation was completed Sunday.

“This repatriation and joint recovery operation are encouraging signs of an accelerated Vietnamese effort to resolve the issue of Americans missing in Vietnam within a two-year period,” said Col. Joe Harvey, leader of the U.S. military excavation team in Vietnam.

“We are hopeful that this work is only the beginning of many such efforts to resolve the fate of those still missing,” Harvey said during a brief ceremony with Vietnamese officials.

Flown to Honolulu

The remains were being flown to Honolulu for forensic identification, which usually takes two to four months.

Coupled with the excavation of the B-52 crash site, the repatriation of remains ends two weeks of unprecedented U.S.-Vietnamese cooperation on resolving the fate of 1,797 Americans listed as MIAs in Vietnam. In Indochina overall, more than 2,400 are MIAs.

As Soviet-made MIG-21 jet fighters roared in the background, Foreign Ministry official Tran Hoan said the excavation showed that the two nations “can cooperate with each other in healing the wounds of war.”

Harvey and Hoan signed a one-page document for the repatriation of remains, and Hoan presented documents on 14 MIA cases in a single, Christmas card-sized envelope.