Proposal to Reopen Tomb of Unknowns

Re the Tomb of the Unknowns, “Line Drawn on Sacred Ground,” Jan. 21: It seems to me when parents give their children to serve and fight for their country and sometimes die for their country, the country should whenever possible return that child to the parents.

CLAUDETTE PRIDDY

Los Angeles

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* I had always been given to understand that the very purpose of the Tomb of the Unknowns is so that the family might feel warm in the hope, or even the belief, that the remains are those of their beloved.

FRED OKRAND

Sherman Oaks

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* I’m sure the reaction of most Americans to the problem of the bones--and what to do with them--of the Russian Romanovs is disgust, disbelief and indifference (Jan. 22). But wait. Should we forget the billions already spent by our government to locate and return the remains of the Vietnam MIAs? Are we any different?

My brother, Charles Sercombe, was co-pilot on a plane flying out of Burma carrying supplies into mainland China during WWII. His plane went down somewhere in the jungles of Burma on the last day of the war and we have heard nothing since. He would have wanted it this way. He loved flying and knew the dangers and neither he nor I would ever want his bones removed. We prefer to remember him as he was. Someone once said, and I quote: “A nation that worries so much about its dead should never go to war.”

HERB SERCOMBE

Arcadia