The government’s long-standing unwavering commitment to bringing home those who fought and died in service to the nation can be found as far back as the Civil War.  However, the modern-day accounting missions roots pre-date the end of the Vietnam War and the legacy of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency goes back over fifty years. 

As U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War expanded and its losses increased, the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1964 established a Special POW/MIA Office to track U.S. prisoners and the missing.  In 1966, the Joint Personnel Recovery Center was established within the U.S. military headquarters responsible for the war.  The Joint Personnel Recovery Center collected information on aircraft losses, crash sites, missing servicemen, and sent out special teams on what were called Bright Light missions, to find and investigate loss sites, gather the information, collect the bodies when possible, and attempt POW rescues.

As the war continued, remains were identified and sent back through the two mortuaries in Vietnam; however, once the Paris Accords were signed on Jan. 27, 1973 officially ending America’s involvement in the war and with the release of our POWs from North Vietnamese control during Operation Homecoming, beginning Feb. 12, 1973 and ending April 4, 1973 when 591 POW’s were released, the next round of changes took place.  The Joint Personnel Recovery Center moved to Thailand and became the Joint Casualty Resolution Center in 1973, continuing its work to reach incident sites in Southeast Asia to account for our MIAs.  Also in 1973, the U.S. Central Identification Laboratory, Thailand was established to identify recovered remains and review medical records related to the MIAs to assist in the investigation and recovery missions.  These missions were not without danger.  A Joint Casualty Resolution Center team was ambushed on Dec. 15, 1973, in South Vietnam, resulting in the Team Leader, U.S. Army Capt. Richard Rees, being killed in action, and the serious wounding of a U.S. Central Identification Laboratory, Thailand NCO, while attempting to investigate a helicopter crash site.  As the team came under fire, and Captain Rees attempted to communicate with the attackers that they were unarmed.  That incident temporarily paused investigation and recovery missions. 

In 1975, after the U.S. officially left the region following the fall of Cambodia and South Vietnam to the Communists, the U.S. Central Identification Laboratory, Thailand, and the Joint Casualty Resolution Center were relocated to Hawaii, where the U.S. Central Identification Laboratory, Thailand became the Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii.  The two organizations continued to work together with the Joint Casualty Resolution Center focused solely on Vietnam losses; however, the Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii also conducted World War II investigation, recovery, and identifications.  In the mid-1980s, during the Reagan Administration, and after high-level negotiations with the newly established Vietnamese government, the first in-country investigations and recovery efforts began December 1983 in Laos, and November 1985 in Vietnam; the first operations in Cambodia were October 1991.  In the 1980s and early 1990s, Vietnam, seeking to lay the groundwork to normalize relations with the United States, conducted a series of unilateral remains turnovers, many of which were later identified as missing U.S. servicemen; this was before DNA technology revolutionized the accounting mission in the mid-1990s.  By 1992, the Joint Casualty Resolution Center was deactivated, and the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting was established at Camp H. M. Smith, Hawaii, under the United States Pacific Command.  The joint task force established in-country Detachments in Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia to support field operations.  Its soul focus was the Vietnam War while the Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii continued to conduct WWII operations and expanded to include the Korean War, conducting the first Korean War mission in 1982.  Joint Task Force-Full Accounting was responsible for the investigation missions and the Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii maintained responsibility for recovery and identifications, augmenting Joint Task Force-Full Accounting teams in Southeast Asia.       

In the aftermath of the war, there were several U.S. Government offices and agencies dedicated to the POW/MIA issue and pursuing the fullest possible accounting of Americans still missing and unaccounted for.  There remained fervent speculation, that Vietnam or its former Lao allies had kept some POWs after 1973, and questions of if any were in fact still alive. 

In 1985, as efforts to pursue the accounting issue with Vietnam gained momentum, President Ronald Reagan tapped former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, U.S. Army Gen. John Vessey to be his special emissary to Vietnam for POW/MIA matters.  Vessey’s number one priority was to determine if any Americans were still being held against their will or if any had been held against their will after the 1973 Paris Peace Accords.  Working with Defense Intelligence Agency, the Joint Casualty Resolution Center, and the National League of POW/MIA Families, Vessey was provided a list of those individuals whose circumstances of loss might have enabled them to survive their original loss incident, and who could have ended up in captivity.  The list consisted of approximately 300 unaccounted for individuals in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam who could possibly have survived their loss incidents and who could still be alive.  These were designated as priority cases, and the list was referred to as the Last Known Alive list.  Since its creation, and as of December 2024, all but 41 names have been removed, the most recent two in September 2019; the others have been recovered and identified, or enough evidence was found to determine the method and approximate timing of their deaths.  Efforts continue to resolve the remaining 41 Last Known Alive cases; however, even if an individual is found to have died, if the remains are not recovered, efforts will continue to recover the individual.  They are not removed from the unaccounted-for list.  As long as an individual is believed recoverable, their case will continue to be pursued until it is resolved.

Between April 1991 and August 1995, the next round of changes to the mission took place.  In April 1991, President George H. W. Bush presented Hanoi with a road map to normalizing ties between the countries, including the opening of an office in Hanoi to continue our accounting efforts in the region.  In July 1991, a U.S. MIA office was opened in Hanoi to pursue the accounting issue and it became the first full-time U.S. government agency presence in Vietnam since 1975, and the first in what was once North Vietnam.  In Washington D.C., the various organizations working the U.S. POW/MIA accounting mission were consolidated under one office in 1993, becoming the Defense POW/MIA Office, later being renamed the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office, which continued research into Southeast Asia losses, but also became the policy focal point for U.S. accounting worldwide.  In 1993, a small division was established at the U.S. Air Force Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory, knows as the Artifacts Section, located at Brook Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, later moving to Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.  The purpose of the Artifact Section of Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory was to review life support materials and aircraft wreckage recovered from Vietnam War crash sites to determine the type of aircraft, survivability of a crash, and how many people might have been on board, based on recovered materials.

While things were progressing for the Vietnam War, Korean War accounting activities were increasing.  Between 1990 and 1994, North Korean representatives turned over 208 boxes of human remains; the remains were repatriated to the U.S. and the Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii began the painstaking scientific analysis of what was returned, estimating the boxes held remains of over 400 individuals.  From 1996 to 2005, North Korea granted Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii teams access to crash sites, battlefields, and prison camp cemeteries for field operations.  Additionally, on July 27, 2018, North Korea turned over 55 boxes that reportedly contained the remains of U.S. servicemen killed during the Korean War.  Efforts to identify these remains are ongoing.

In August 1995, during the Clinton Administration, the U.S. and Vietnam established diplomatic relations and a U.S. Embassy in Hanoi was opened.  In 1997, our first Ambassador to post-war Vietnam, a former POW and three term Representative from Florida, Douglas “Pete” Peterson, was confirmed.

Between 2000 and 2003, the next changes in the accounting mission occurred.  The Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii continued its work with augmenting Joint Task Force-Full Accounting; however, Washington, wanting to see a closer relationship between the two Hawaii-based organizations, and further expansion of investigation and recovery efforts for the earlier periods, consolidated the two organizations for establish the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in October 2003. 

A reminder of the inherent danger in the accounting mission, occurred on April 7, 2001, when a Vietnamese Mi-17 helicopter, carrying nine Vietnamese, and seven U.S. personnel assigned to Joint Task Force-Full Accounting, the Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii, and augmentees from the U.S. Navy, were killed when their aircraft, flying in poor weather conditions, struck a hilltop while making preparations for the next planned mission.  Among the U.S. killed were the incoming and outgoing Detachment Commanders. The mission was put on hold for several months, while the crash was investigated, and both the U.S. and Vietnamese could reassess mission and personnel requirements, before resuming later that year.

The most recent change to the accounting mission occurred in 2015 when the three organizations focused on POW/MIA affairs: the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii, the Artifacts Section of Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory in Ohio, and the Defense POW/MIA Office  in Washington D.C., were consolidated to become the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.  The agency continues to research and develop new technologies to identify remains and assist in recovery activities and partner with universities, non-government entities, and foreign governments to advance mission efficiencies and effectiveness with the ultimate goal of recovering and identifying those lost from past conflicts and find answers for families. 

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency continues to research wartime records; conduct field investigations and recoveries; survey of battle, burial and crash sites; disinter graves from various wars in order to make identifications through medical records and DNA matches; conduct both terrestrial and underwater recoveries; and meet with the families of our unaccounted on a regular basis, in Washington D.C. and various cities around the country throughout the year to ensure they have the latest information regarding U.S. government efforts to account for those missing from our nation’s past conflicts.