page_title: Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command
section_title: Recovery
hierarchical_section_title: Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command / Operations / Recovery
caption_attribution_description: English: United Nations Command (UNC) honor guard members receive remains from Korean People's Army soldiers during a repatriation ceremony at the Panmunjom Joint Security Area, Republic of Korea (ROK) on Nov. 6, 1998. Repatriation of Korean War remains are a result of a joint U.S./Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea joint recovery operation within North Korea to locate and return the U.S. service members to their homeland through Panmunjom. Twenty-nine service members have been returned since the joint recovery operation began in 1996. (U.S. Air Force photo by TSgt James Mossman) (Released)
context_page_description: The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command was a joint task force within the United States Department of Defense whose mission was to account for Americans who are listed as Prisoners of War, or Missing in Action, from all past wars and conflicts. It was especially visible in conjunction with the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue. The mission of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command was to achieve the fullest possible accounting of all Americans missing as a result of the nation's past conflicts. The motto of JPAC was "Until they are home".
  On 30 January 2015, JPAC was officially deactivated by the Department of Defense. The Defense Department's efforts at reform followed a series of embarrassing scandals and damning revelations in reports and testimony before Congress starting in 2013 concerning failures in the effort to identify missing war dead. JPAC, the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office, and certain functions of the U.S. Air Force's Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory, were all merged into the new Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
context_section_description: JPAC had 18 Recovery Teams whose members traveled throughout the world to recover missing from past wars. A typical recovery team was made up of 10 to 14 people, led by a team leader and a forensic anthropologist. Other members of the team typically included a team sergeant, linguist, medic, life support technician, forensic photographer, RF systems communications technician/operator and an explosive ordnance disposal technician. Additional experts were added to the mission as needed, such as mountaineering specialists or divers.
  The team carefully excavates the site and screens the soil to locate all possible remains and artifacts. In the case of an airplane crash, a recovery site may be quite large.
  Once the recovery effort was completed, the team returned to Hawaii. All remains and artifacts found during the recovery operation were then transported from a U.S. military plane or private airline to JPAC's Central Identification Laboratory where identification took an average of 18 months; often cited statistics of 11 years include materials that were severely commingled (intentionally) from turnovers from the Korean People's Army in the mid-1990s.  These materials only recently began to be identified used several different DNA techniques.
caption: United Nations Command (UNC) honor guard members receive remains from Korean People's Army soldiers at the Joint Security Area Nov 6,1998
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