Miami-Dade Seminar Updates Family Members Of Missing Soldiers

MiamiHerald.com - Miami, FL, USA

About 100 family members of missing U.S. soldiers attended a Defense Department seminar to learn what the government is doing to find their loved ones.

BY DAVID SMILEY
dsmiley@MiamiHerald.com

It has haunted the family of Martin Stern -- for 65 years and counting.

Stern's B-24 bomber exploded Jan. 16, 1944, shortly after taking off from Atkinson Field in then British Guiana. His body was never found. His grave in New York merely a marker -- a headstone atop an empty plot of land. The only remnant of his 21-year-old short life: a torn identification card. A forgotten soldier.

Harriette Kunis, Stern's wife, isn't bitter but is still angry. ''I never heard anything from anybody,'' said Kunis, now 88 and remarried. ``That fury is still in me.''

On Saturday, Kunis hoped to reconcile her rage with knowledge, as she and about 100 others whose family members went missing during World War II, the Korean War, the conflict in Vietnam and the Cold War came to Miami-Dade to learn what the government is doing to find their loved ones. In all, some 88,000 soldiers are listed as missing.

The seminar, held at the Hilton Miami Airport Hotel, allowed government and military experts to explain the long, difficult process of bringing home missing soldiers and of finding and identifying the remains of those who died abroad.

More than $100 million is spent each year to try and find the soldiers.

Researchers scour millions of U.S. and foreign military files to pinpoint when and where soldiers went missing.

Government teams fly around the world to examine plane crashes on mountain peaks or to excavate unmarked burial grounds. Often they fight time, as acidic soil, shallow graves or bone-eating ants can destroy all evidence.

Sometimes international relations get in the way of research (North Korea and Russia's archives are off-limits) or recovery missions (helicopters are not allowed in China.)

When remains are found, scientists check dental records or compare family members' DNA with bones to find matches and potentially scratch one name off an enormous list.

On Saturday, Richard Laier, 57, had his cheek swabbed to give investigators DNA evidence that could lead to the identification of his father.

''I'm still hopeful they will bring his remains home,'' said Laier, who was born three days after Capt. Robert Laier was shot down by a Russian fighter pilot.

He believes his dad died in the crash but would like to bring closure to his family.

Laier first began seeking information on his father in 1993, around the time that Congress, pressured by the families of missing soldiers, urged the Department of Defense to open up lines of communication.

That led to the formation of the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office, an umbrella organization created to unify the search and identification efforts.

Larry Greer, a Defense Department spokesman, acknowledged that communication hasn't always been free flowing.

''Historically, the government had not done a very good job of keeping families informed about what was being done to find the missing,'' Greer said Saturday. ``The effort was always there, but as late as the Vietnam War it was scattered.''

Today, Greer said more than 14,000 family members have attended seminars to learn what is being done.

''My hat is off to these people for what they're doing today,'' said Robert Hadnot, whose younger brother went missing on Oct. 20, 1950.

PFC Charles Hadnot, then 19, was taken as a prisoner of war during the Korean War and is believed to have been shot dead with a number of other prisoners in the Kujang Tunnel in North Korea. Hadnot, however, has seen his brother's name on lists of soldiers believed to be missing in action.

Until Saturday, Hadnot, 78, had mostly resorted to finding information about his brother through old newspaper articles and websites. His sister once saw a psychic who said Charles Hadnot was living and in the Czech Republic.

Arthur Kunis, who flew in from Oregon, said he learned that an anthropologist plans to visit his father's crash site in Guyana soon. Kunis, 65, said knowing that there are others who share his hurt and that the government is in fact trying to find his father was good enough.

''It was incredible,'' he said. ``There is actually a lot of hope.''

To learn more about the Defense Department's efforts to find missing soldiers, visit www.dtic.mil/dpmo/ online.