5A WEST HAWAII TODAY | FRIDAY, MARCH 25, 2016 TODAY’S WEATHER KONA TIDES TODAY SUN AND MOON NATIONAL WEATHER TODAY Shown is today’s weather. Temperatures are today’s highs and tonight’s lows. SATELLITE VIEW NATIONAL CITIES TODAY Sun Rise Set Today 6:24 a.m. 6:37 p.m. Saturday 6:23 a.m. 6:37 p.m. Today 8:44 p.m. 7:54 a.m. Saturday 9:32 p.m. 8:32 a.m. Last New First Full Wailuku 82/65 Kailua-Kona 83/71 City Hi/Lo/W City Hi/Lo/W City Hi/Lo/W City Hi/Lo/W City Hi/Lo/W City Hi/Lo/W City Hi/Lo/W City Hi/Lo/W City Hi/Lo/W Weather(W): s-sunny, pc-partly cloudy, c-cloudy, sh-showers, t-thunderstorms, r-rain, sf-snow flurries, sn-snow, i-ice. ‘UNTIL THEY ARE HOME’ US remains in N. Korea lost in political limbo RYONGYON-RI, North Korea (AP) — The village elder put his shovel aside, stooped down by a scraggly bush and pulled a sack from the freshly turned dirt. Spreading open the sack, he reached in to reveal femurs, skull and jaw fragments, boots and a rusted green helmet. “These are your American GIs,” Song Hong Ik said at a burial mound near the top of a small hill. Perhaps they are. But for more than a decade, no one has been trying to find out. “Until They Are Home” is one of the most sacred vows of the U.S. military, yet Washington has long suspended efforts to look for 5,300 American GIs missing in North Korea whose remains are potentially recoverable. The countries’ abysmal relations suggest that no restart is coming soon. In the meantime, possible remains and recovery sites are being lost as North Korea works to improve its infrastructure with projects such as the Chongchon River No. 10 Hydroelectric Power Station. The bones Song revealed came from that project’s construction site. His village, the hamlet of Ryongyon-ri, is nestled among low rolling hills in the heart of a Korean War battleground about almost 100 miles north of Pyongyang. Song said construction on the plant, which involved a lot of digging, began in earnest four years ago. That’s when the bones started piling up, he said. Enough, he added, to fill a half-dozen makeshift burial mounds on the hill, maybe 70 or 100 sets in all. Time running out Between 1996 and 2005, joint U.S.-North Korea search teams conducted 33 joint recovery operations and recovered 229 sets of American remains. Washington broke them off because it claimed the safety of its searchers was not guaranteed. Critics of the program argued the North was using the deal to squeeze cash out of Washington — “bones for bucks,” they said. Talks to restart recovery work resumed in 2011, only to fall apart after North Korea launched a rocket condemned by the U.S. as a banned test of ballistic missile technology. There has been no progress since. With distrust between the two countries chronically high, it took months of requests before the Associated Press was allowed to go to Ryongyon-ri, first last May with a Korean People’s Army escort and again in December. The AP made the requests because North Korea’s state-run media have repeatedly said — without giving details — that with construction, agricultural and other infrastructure projects going forward, time is running out for the U.S. military to collect its Korean War dead. In Washington, such claims are often seen as a not-so-subtle jab at the U.S. government for halting the searches, or an effort to guilt the U.S. into formal talks it has refused to engage in as long as Pyongyang continues its nuclear weapons program. Pyongyang’s approval of the AP’s visits to Ryongyon-ri may have had similar political motivations. 5,300 lost in North Korea More than 7,800 U.S. troops remain lost and unrecovered from the Korean War. About 5,300 were lost in North Korea. According to the Pentagon’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, most died in major battles or as prisoners of war. Others died “along the wayside or in small villages” and many of the losses from aircraft crashes also occurred near battle zones or roads connecting them. “So,” it says, “it is possible that major concentrations of human remains are located in these areas.” The DPAA lists Kujang County, where Ryongyon-ri is located, as part of a prime search area that could potentially yield 1,600 remains. The Chosin Reservoir, where another major campaign was fought, and POW camp burial grounds near the Chinese border are also priority sites. “The Department of Defense is committed to achieving the fullest possible accounting,” Lt. Col. Holly Slaughter, a DPAA spokeswoman, said. “U.S. efforts to recover Korean War remains are a humanitarian effort for our missing servicemen, their families and the American people.” Even so, Maj. Natasha Waggoner, another spokeswoman for the agency, said there is no schedule “at this time” to hold talks to send any search teams back. Until they do, the jury will remain out on the Ryongyon-ri remains. It’s impossible to judge the veracity of remains simply by looking at them. Only expert eyes and a long and difficult forensic identification process can do that. There were no dogtags, unit insignia or other identification clues mixed in with the remains seen by the AP. Villagers acknowledged the remains were gathered haphazardly as construction progressed. It is quite possible, they said, the remains could include animal bones or the remains of combatants from other countries. Villagers old enough to have witnessed the battle have sketchy memories, at best. By the time the fighting came to their backyard, from mid-November to December 1950, most of the village, a scattering of about 30 households, had already been evacuated. Those who remained were mostly women, children and old people. The village was then known as Sangpyong. “My aunt, uncle and grandfather were caught by the U.S. enemies, who beat them so they got sick and died,” said Kim Ri Jun, who was then 13 years old. The location and timeframe coincide with a major clash between the U.S. and its allies and the Chinese “volunteer” forces fighting on Pyongyang’s side. The push north was known as the “Home by Christmas” campaign because Gen. Douglas MacArthur thought the war would be won by Christmas. Instead, it would last 2.5 more years, end in a stalemate and claim 36,500 American lives. The U.S. government has estimated as many as 270 sets of American remains are likely recoverable in Kujang County alone. Searching for them was one of the top priorities when the U.S. missions were still going to North Korea. Nearly a dozen joint searches were conducted in the area from 1998-2000. But they ended long before the real digging in Ryongyon-ri began. Comrades still lie in the ground That any joint searches were held at all was almost miraculous. That they would break down seems much more predictable. North Korea and the United States remain technically at war because the 1950-53 fighting ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. Remains recovery is the only project their militaries have ever worked on together. Relations were much better when the missions began. Under President Bill Clinton, the two countries had signed an agreement for the North to freeze its illicit plutonium weapons program in exchange for aid. But that deal unraveled in 2002, the same year President George W. Bush declared North Korea part of the “axis of evil.” The searches continued for a few more years, but bilateral relations took a nosedive. North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in 2006 and meaningful contact between the two countries has since been minimal. Slaughter, of the DPAA, said the total cost to the U.S. to carry out the joint missions was $19.5 million. Of the 229 remains recovered, 110 have been identified. The recovery of remains has since ground to a halt — to only six, all unilaterally handed over to the U.S. by Pyongyang in 2007. The impasse on a humanitarian — not political — issue doesn’t sit well with some Korean War veterans. “Those of us who fought there really feel it’s a travesty that we haven’t been able to get there and try to find those that were killed or died in the prison camps,” said Larry Kinard, who fought in Korea with the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division and is now president of the 15,000-member Korean War Veterans Association. He noted that since 1982 only 332 Korean War remains have been identified and accounted for. Song, meanwhile, said he had mixed feelings about gathering the bones of his enemy and moving them to the hill so that they wouldn’t be lost when the valley is flooded. “Frankly, I don’t care if the Americans come or not,” he said. “But they owe us a thank you for taking care of their dead.” BY ERIC TALMADGE ASSOCIATED PRESS First Time Height Second Time Height Hanalei Kapaa Waialua Laie Lanai Hana Kapaau Honokaa Hilo Naalehu Captain Cook Mountain View Kihei Mokapu Ewa Beach Honolulu Kaunakakai Kalaheo Kekaha Shown are noon positions of weather systems and precipitation. Temperature bands are highs for the day. As of 3 p.m. yesterday. Moon Rise Set Mar 31 Apr 7 Apr 13 Apr 21 Albany, NY 60/32/sh Albuquerque 66/36/s Amarillo 74/35/pc Anchorage 41/34/r Atlanta 69/51/s Austin 72/46/s Baltimore 72/41/sh Billings 42/24/sn Birmingham 69/45/s Bismarck 40/15/sn Boise 49/30/sn Boston 63/36/r Buffalo 40/26/pc Charleston, SC 79/63/t Charleston, WV 55/37/c Charlotte, NC 79/51/pc Cheyenne 37/17/sn Chicago 45/32/s Cincinnati 50/35/pc Cleveland 40/30/pc Columbia, SC 79/56/pc Dallas 69/50/s Denver 42/21/pc Des Moines 53/41/pc Detroit 47/29/pc Duluth 45/31/c El Paso 76/49/s Fairbanks 43/25/pc Fargo 45/26/sn Grand Rapids 45/27/s Green Bay 35/24/s Honolulu 81/68/sh Houston 70/50/s Indianapolis 49/35/s Jackson, MS 67/45/s Jacksonville 81/64/t Juneau 49/39/r Kansas City 59/42/pc Key West 83/76/pc Lansing 44/28/s Las Vegas 79/55/s Little Rock 62/40/s Los Angeles 77/56/s Louisville 55/38/s Madison 43/31/s Memphis 61/42/s Miami 85/74/t Milwaukee 39/30/s Minneapolis 45/37/pc Nashville 59/37/s New Orleans 72/55/s New York City 69/41/sh Norfolk 78/50/sh Oklahoma City 69/47/s Omaha 55/37/pc Orlando 83/68/t Philadelphia 72/43/sh Phoenix 85/57/s Pittsburgh 51/31/c Portland, ME 53/32/r Portland, OR 56/41/sh Providence 64/37/r Raleigh 78/51/t Reno 66/33/pc Sacramento 72/48/s St. Louis 56/39/s Salt Lake City 46/32/r San Antonio 72/50/s San Diego 73/58/s San Francisco 65/52/s San Juan, PR 84/75/pc Santa Fe 61/27/pc Seattle 54/40/pc Spokane 50/32/c Syracuse 52/26/sh Tampa 80/71/t Tucson 82/49/s Tulsa 68/47/s Washington, DC 72/45/sh Wichita 67/43/pc Wichita Falls 72/47/s Forecasts and graphics provided by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2016 High 4:35 a.m. 1.5’ Low 10:46 a.m. -0.1’ High 5:15 p.m. 1.7’ Low 11:20 p.m. 0.2’ 77/66 78/66 80/66 80/68 75/61 80/69 82/67 81/63 83/66 78/64 80/60 84/64 78/68 81/66 81/68 78/64 77/63 80/65 78/62 NATIONAL SUMMARY: Showers and thunderstorms will extend along much of the Atlantic Seaboard for a time today. The storms can be locally severe in the South. Much of the area from the Great Lakes to the Southwest will be dry and sunny. Snow and rain will extend from the northern Rockies to the northern Plains. The coastal Northwest can expect some sunshine. Village elder Kim Ri Jun digs up a burlap sack which he claims contains the remains belonging to a soldier who fought in the Korean War from a burial site on Ryongyon-ri hill in Kujang county, North Korea. WONG MAYE-E/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
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