The largest of the JTF-FA elements is Detachment 2 in Hanoi. The challenges faced in the search for closure on Americans missing in Vietnam are much the same as in Laos and Cambodia, but the numbers are larger. Army Lt. Col. Mike Peppers heads an office of six permanently assigned personnel, augmented full-time by two American linguists fluent in Vietnamese.

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In May 2000, Colonel Peppers was in the mountains of central Vietnam, accompanying the 60th JFA team to work in Vietnam. That mission, conducted between April 25 and May 24, 2000, was staged mostly from Da Nang. The team of 96 personnel included six recovery elements, plus two investigative elements and a research and investigation team. Like Detachment 3 in Laos, Detachment 2 conducts five JFAs in Vietnam each calendar year, but they are larger than those in Laos.

‘We average around 100 men per JFA,’ explained Detachment 2’s operations officer and deputy commander, Air Force Major John Fisher. ‘We don’t have the same restrictions on team size and geographical constraints as Laos does.’

The areas that were covered in May 2000 illustrate the broad scope of the recovery operations in Vietnam. Investigation elements worked on leads in 13 provinces scattered all over the country. Recovery teams worked at six excavation sites in five different provinces. Quang Ninh, the northeasternmost province in Vietnam, posed unusual weather challenges. ‘We can only get in there about two or three months a year because of the weather,’ Major Fisher said. ‘So our Vietnamese counterparts suggested this would be the best time to get in there and get busy now, while we could.’

The Quang Ninh crash site was very difficult to reach — a steep mountainside covered with bamboo and thick jungle foliage. Temperatures rose above 100 degrees, and poisonous snakes, centipedes and the steepness of the terrain posed health and safety hazards to the American and Vietnamese workers. Most sites also had the hazard of unexploded ordnance. Another team assigned to a crash site in Thua Thien province required technical rock climbing skills to gain access to the crash site.

One of the most significant advances achieved by JTF-FA has been the resolution of cases involving missing persons who, either through debriefings from returned prisoners of war or photographs and other documentary evidence, were last known to have been alive after being shot down or captured. These so-called discrepancy cases have been among the most contentious issues of the postwar accountability effort, and resolving them is the highest priority for JTF-FA detachments. At the end of American involvement in the war in 1973, there were 196 individuals who were listed as ‘last known alive’ in Vietnam but not accounted for by the Vietnamese. By January 2001 only 41 individuals remained on that list. In Laos, the number of those last known alive has been reduced from 81 to 63, and in Cambodia, from 19 to 15.

Another controversial area of JTF-FA’s accountability is the investigation of so-called live-sighting reports of Americans held in the region against their will. There have been 119 live-sighting reports to date, and every one of them received immediate and intensive investigation. Not one single report was found to be a valid instance of a missing American serviceman.

Both the CILHI and JTF-FA personnel are highly qualified in their specialties. JTF-FA detachment commanders go through a particularly rigorous selection process. Prerequisites include successful battalion- or squadron-level command. Candidates are scrutinized to determine whether they can operate in a remote environment and deal effectively with senior officials of the host country.

Although most CILHI and JTF-FA personnel are too young to have fought in Vietnam, they are singularly dedicated to resolving the fate of their fellow servicemen. Every person involved in the process says his or her biggest disappointment is when an arduous search turns up physical evidence of a crash site or incident, but no remains are recovered. ‘We never want to give up on a single person,’ one team member said. ‘We just owe it to them and their families to do everything we can to resolve each and every case.’

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