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BY SUZANNE LABARRE

suzanne.labarre@newsday.com

August 3, 2007

A prisoner of war in Austria for a year and a half during World War II, Michael Colamonico kept busy drawing in a notebook. He bartered with German soldiers to score crayon pencils and sketched visions of home: fighter jets, the Statue of Liberty, a pin-up girl bedecked in stars and stripes.

"In order to keep a healthy mind, I was active," he said. "I did whatever I could."

But after the war, he stowed the journal, along with newspaper clippings, photos and letters, in a shoebox. The war wasn't something he cared to discuss.

On Thursday, Colamonico, 86, of Huntington, visited the American Airpower Museum in Farmingdale, where a volunteer scanned much of the shoebox's contents into a computer.

It was the inaugural event for Operation Shoebox, a project aimed at preserving World War II-era imagery, in which the public is invited to the museum to scan personal archives onto a CD. The first 50 visitors tomorrow and Sunday are free.

With more than 1,000 World War II veterans dying daily, preserving collections such as Colamonico's is essential to building a rich historical record, said Julia Lauria-Blum, an oral historian at the museum.

"We're encouraging people to take out those shoeboxes and talk about those experiences, because it's a history they'll lose to time and death," she said.

On Thursday, Colamonico sorted through his memorabilia, spread on a table in the museum, where he's an occasional volunteer. There was his journal, fragile and yellow with age, and his postcards, each marked "gepruft," approved by German authorities. There was a photograph of him, fresh-faced and smiling with fellow members of the Air Force. And there was a mugshot, snapped just months later, of a young man with wild hair and a days-old beard. It was Colamonico, the day after he arrived at Stalag 17.

Colamonico, a top turret gunner and B-17 flight engineer in the 8th Air Force, 92nd Bombardment Group, 327th Bomb Squadron, was shot down Dec. 31, 1943, after bombing enemy airfields near Bordeaux, France. It was his first mission. He was captured, along with seven others, by German soldiers and forced into solitary confinement. Nine days later, a freight train carted him to the Austrian camp later made famous in Billy Wilder's epic film "Stalag 17." Colamonico was 22.

It was nightmarish living, he said. Mattresses were filled with wood chips and bunk beds were stacked three on top of each other. For breakfast, he ate a piece of bread, topped with jam and sawdust. Toilet paper was cardboard rubbed soft. As an American soldier, he didn't work, so he passed time drawing and staging plays with barracks-mates. He saved -- and Thursday scanned -- one of the playbills: "Parade of Stars: First Anniversary of the Cardboard Playhouse."

Colamonico was liberated May 3, 1945, in Braunau -- the birthplace of Adolf Hitler -- after a 30-day westward march. It was "the happiest day of my life," he said.

Only recently, though, did the Brooklyn native start discussing the war. Before, he said, "no one cared." But now, he's eager to share his archives -- and he hopes others will do the same.

Copyright © 2007, Newsday Inc.

The POWs of the Korean War are a lesson to those who follow

Thursday August 02, 2007

WHEN coddled younger generations of Americans engage in histrionics like burning the flag, they disrespect legions who have given their all for the liberty for which it stands.

It is as good a way as any to telegraph ignorance of what matters.

Charleston was honored this week by the presence of some of the people who have served liberty -- about 400 former POWs of the Korean War and members of their families, in town for an annual reunion.

It is a gathering of people who survived shattering experiences most people can't imagine, much less understand.

And it is a good reminder to stand by those who succeed them in service to the United States. Some give more to change human history than others,

and that's a fact.

There is little whining, little bitterness, in this group that suffered so much.

Bill Norwood, now 77, "came from poverty in Tennessee." He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1947 and counted himself fortunate.

"Here I had two pairs of pants, two pairs of boots, a warm coat and more," he told the Daily Mail's Mary Childress. "I thought it was great. Plus, I was paid $75 a month -- big money to a boy from the South.

"But most importantly, I was given an allotment of $30 that I sent home to my mother every month, and the Army matched that amount.

"Despite everything, I enjoyed the military,"

Norwood said. "I put on that uniform, and I felt 10 feet tall."

Norwood was captured in 1951.

Jack Chapman, 74, now of Mesilla, N.M., enlisted when he was 16. Wounded seven times in three days, he became a POW in November 1950.

Like so many others, they spent years in captivity until after the war ended in 1953. They endured bitter cold, unspeakable cruelty, and more.

And they were the fortunate ones. About 8,000 soldiers are still listed as missing in action in Korea.

Their brothers in arms never forget them. Norwood formed the ex-POW association in 1976, and the survivors have been helping to heal each other ever since.

The U.S. government does not forget its veterans either. Decade after decade, it has continued to seek an accounting of the remaining Korean War POWs.

North Korea fought liberty to a stalemate, and has staved it off for more than 50 years now.

But these men, and others like them, won their war. Tens of millions of South Koreans live different lives.

That is an achievement that does indeed justify standing tall.

BY PETE DAVIS AND MARCELA �LVAREZ

Thursday, August 2, 2007 10:43 AM CDT

Relatives and friends of Queens military personnel serving in Iraq are forming a support group to connect family members and friends with others in similar situations, The Queens Courier has learned.

The group, which has tentatively agreed on the name ‘Family Members Of Those Missing In Action Or Killed,' is working to finalize specifics of the organization, but it has its foundations in Corona with three mothers of soldiers, two who have been killed in action in Iraq and one still missing or captured.

Talks for starting the group began when friends and family members of Specialist Alex Jimenez, 25, a Corona resident who has been missing in Iraq since May 12, began joining his mother, Maria del Rosario Duran, to pray for her son's return.

“I think it's important for the families and friends of soldiers to know that there is a support group they can cling to,” said Duran, who will be the President of the organization. “That is why we decided to get together, because we all share the same grief.”

Within blocks of Duran's Corona home, two other mothers, Gladys Ciro, who lost her son Marlon Bustamante, 25, on February 1, 2006, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Humvee in Iraq, and Maria Gomez, whose son Jose Gomez, 23, died on an Iraqi battlefield on April 28, 2006, are going through similar situations.

THE QUEENS COURIER/PHOTO BY CHRISTINA SANTUCCI Maria del Rosario Duran, mother of MIA Specialist Alex Jimenez, will join with family and friends to form a support group for other families dealing with the hardships of war.

“We are going through difficult times, having our beloved sons, husbands, daughters in Iraq, so we decided to form this support group with the families and friends,” Duran said. “I had many mothers coming to me, desperate to find a helping hand to listen to them. Often, what people need is to be heard, to find some solace/comfort in these hard times.”

City Councilmember Hiram Monserrate, who has supported the soldiers' families throughout their grief, will serve on the Board of Directors of the organization and sees it as an important opportunity to help the affected families.

“These mothers share a common pain,” Monserrate said. “It was important for me to share that pain with them.”

Yoselin Genao, an East Elmhurst resident and friend of the Duran family, has attended preliminary meetings with the group, and experienced the mothers of the soldiers interacting with one another.

“One thing I have seen with them in terms of support, it is not the same as someone who has been through it in terms of their courage, hope and anger,” she said. “[Only] they know that feeling.”

Jose Gomez

In addition to providing emotional support, the group plans to counsel families of soldiers on the rights and benefits soldiers are eligible for when coming home from war.

“Oftentimes they come home, but don't have a place to stay,” said Miguel L�pez, who is involved with coordinating the new group. “Our soldiers don't have anything, not even their own roof, after so much sacrifice.”

Alirio Orduna, who is the Commander of the New York Military Youth Cadets based in Elmhurst, and a veteran who served during the Vietnam and Cold War, expressed similar sentiments saying he hopes this organization can serve as a model for others.

“My goal is not to go only local, it's to go national,” Orduna said.

Monserrate said that the group would likely hold a press conference on Tuesday, August 7 to announce the organization's formation and then hold a formal ceremony shortly thereafter, possibly at Gracie Mansion in Manhattan.

Gaithersburg repository helps prevent ‘unknown soldiers’

Dan Gross⁄The Gazette Lawrence H. Drayton, director of Repository Operations for the Department of Defense DNA Registry in Gaithersburg, stands inside one of the large freezers where blood samples are kept. The samples are used to identify remains.

Several weeks ago, Georgianne DeMarco of Bakersfield, Calif., planned a funeral for a brother missing for 40 years.

Marine Cpl. Jim E. Moshier was presumed killed in 1967 when the helicopter carrying him and 10 others crashed in Vietnam.

His remains came home to rest in mid-July, thanks in part to the Department of Defense DNA Registry, comprised of a DNA special laboratory in Rockville and DNA repository in Gaithersburg.

‘‘I had never experienced the death of somebody extremely close until that happened 40 years ago,” said DeMarco, 66. ‘‘It’s hard enough for somebody young to accept a death when you see the body. But when you are told that something has happened halfway around the world and you will never see that person again, that is very hard to accept, especially for a young person. Young people are not supposed to die.”

The return of her younger brother’s remains allowed DeMarco and her 89-year-old mother some peace, she said Sunday.

The Marine who was 23 when he died was greeted at the airport by family, a special ceremony and the motorcycle-riding Patriot Guard on bikes bearing American and POW⁄MIA flags. More than 300 mourners attended Moshier’s military funeral, complete with 21-gun salute, his sister said. The soldier was buried in a hometown cemetery — near his father and the young son whom he had never met.

Identifying the fallen

The Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory, the world-class Rockville laboratory that assisted in identifying Moshier uses nuclear, mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal DNA techniques to identify current-day and ancient remains.

The lab has helped name soldiers killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other major conflicts, including World War II, the Korean War, the Cold War and the Vietnam War, said Col. Louis N. Finelli, chief deputy medical examiner and director.

The lab has been called on to identify remains of passengers of United Flight 93, the Columbia Space Shuttle, Sept. 11 victims killed in the Pentagon, and many others beyond military personnel — even Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The lab has unique capabilities, like the ability to test hair and improvised explosive devices, Finelli said. So elite are the system and its scientists that the FBI sends work — as do other countries, the Defense Department and some criminal attorneys.

‘‘Basically we’re one-stop shopping,” Finelli said last week. ‘‘If we can’t do it, you’re probably going to be out of luck.”

Age and availability of DNA samples from tissue or bone often determine testing procedures. Nuclear DNA, which comes from the cell’s nucleus and divides evenly into DNA from both parents, is typically used for identifying military personnel killed in the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, Finelli said.

Ancient or ‘‘challenged” remains damaged by the environment or other factors are usually tested using mitochondrial DNA, found in the cell's mitochondria and inherited only from the mother. This testing helped determine Moshier’s identity.

Mitochondrial DNA is tougher to test, but can come from tiny samples and multiplies abundantly, so is easily duplicated by a lab.

Some years ago, DeMarco attended a Sacramento conference held by the Defense POW⁄MIA Personnel office, which holds regular meetings to keep families informed about the cases of missing loved ones.

DNA Registry scientists were there to take mitochondrial DNA. DeMarco offered hers.

‘‘It’s an intense process to identify these families,” Finelli said. ‘‘It can take years. We have [specimens] we’ve had in the laboratories for years and we’re just missing that extra bit of DNA that will convince the families.”

The nation’s Joint POW⁄MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) works with other governments, including those of Korea, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, to find remains of military personnel missing in action.

Once remains are found, JPAC sends them to a Central Identification Lab in Hawaii for initial identification.

Then the DNA Registry lab in Rockville tests for sure.

‘‘Some people will not want to believe. They will contest it,” Finelli said. ‘‘Some people just start crying the minute you show up at the door and say, ‘We believe we have your loved one.’”

Storing DNA

An unmarked deep-freeze warehouse hidden deep in Gaithersburg assures that there will never again be an unknown soldier.

After Operation Desert Storm in the 1990s, the Defense Department decided it needed a more reliable method to identify remains.

Since 1992, the DNA Registry’s Gaithersburg repository has gathered samples from 5,130,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guard, said Lawrence H. Drayton, director of repository operations.

A large percentage is housed in ‘‘Big Bertha,” a two-story, 31-foot long, 24-foot deep, 22-foot wide storage freezer cooled to an icy negative 22 degrees.

Upon enlistment, military members smudge two quarter-sized blood samples on a small white card marked with their name and social security number. Cards are shipped to Gaithersburg from more than 1,300 sites worldwide.

Lab technicians affix a bar code label marked with the donor’s first initial and first three letters of the donor’s last name to the sample. The information is then entered into a database to verify military status, then vacuum-packed in a plastic bag to be stored for 50 years.

In 2006 the warehouse collected 301,903 samples and expects in 2042 — the repository’s 50th anniversary — to have 17 million.

‘‘They do a marvelous service,” DeMarco said.

Mary Childress
Daily Mail staff
Wednesday August 01, 2007

When Jack Chapman returned home after spending 2 1/2 years as a North Korean prisoner of war, the first thing he did was meet some friends from school for a drink.

"We went to this bar and the bartender asked where I'd been," Chapman said. "I told him I'd just come back from Korea."

"‘Oh,'" the bartender said, "‘you're one of those cowards.'"

"If I could have come across the bar and beat him, I would have," he recalled. "We were part of the forgotten soldiers -- just like when the Vietnam War soldiers returned home. We were part of that forgotten war."

Chapman, 74, of Mesilla, New Mexico, is in Charleston this week for the Korean War Ex-POW Association's annual reunion at the Charleston Marriot Hotel. About 500 people, including family members, are attending the reunion.

Chapman is the president of the group, which has more than 2,000 members representing veterans from the U.S., Britain, France, Ireland, Australia, Philippines, Korea, Turkey, Mexico, Belgium, Canada and South Africa.

"I enlisted in the Army three days after my 16th birthday," Chapman said. "After serving in Colorado and Alaska, I was sent to Japan in 1950. The Korean War broke out that year and I landed in country.

"I was captured outside the Chosin Reservoir and within three days was wounded seven times," he remembered. "That was Nov. 28, 29 and 30, 1950. During the battle there, we were run over by the Chinese and captured."

Chapman said he was shot in his head, both legs and arms and his rear end.

"I was very fortunate. My fellow soldiers, U.S. Marines and a British Royal Marine in particular, carried and drug me for 19 days until we reached the POW camp," Chapman said.

He found one of the Marines who saved his life at one of the association's reunions in the 1980s. "He didn't believe it was me," Chapman recalled. "He cried when he realized who I was. He thought I had died."

There were 140 men in his unit who were captured and marched through the North Korean countryside. Chapman didn't receive medical treatment from his captors, only from his fellow soldiers. It took more than nine months for the wounds to heal.

"I celebrated my 18, 19 and 20th birthdays as a POW," he said. "The first camp we were in was near the Yalu River and then they marched us north to Pyongyang. In 1951 they separated us again and we marched for almost nine months.

"The North Koreans took us to wherever they wanted us to be," Chapman said. "I think they marched us from village to village just to show the Korean people they were taking prisoners."

Chapman has horrible memories of one POW camp where the GIs were sick, lying around yelling and screaming for help, some dead but not buried and others only partly buried. "Nobody was being cared for," he said.

"Thank goodness we didn't stay there long. They sent us north to camp Changsong where I met Bill Norwood."

Norwood, 77, of Cleveland, Tenn., founded the POW group in 1976. "In the camps you formed unique friendships because our survival depended on the guy next to you," he said. "I started searching for the guys back in the 1970s and located 12 from my camp. We got together and talked and talked and talked. It was something we all needed to do."

He found that the suffering that he and other POWs had gone through had been deeply suppressed after the war. "Just like me, most of the guys couldn't talk about what happened to them with their wives or families," Norwood said. "Once we got together, it was like therapy for all of us."

The annual reunion still serves as a therapy session for many. "We are like a family because we all have so much in common," he said. "What we couldn't tell to our families we can talk to each other about. That's why these reunions are so important. It's a lot better than seeing a psychiatrist and a whole lot cheaper."

The association doesn't charge a registration fee and operates on donations only. "We officially meet every year as an association, but smaller groups meet more often if they happen to live close to one another," Norwood said.

When he was captured, he was taken to Changsong. "If the U.S. forces got too close, our captors would move us to the front of the camp because the North Koreans thought they wouldn't shoot us," he recalled. "They moved us at night from April to August. I've been told that we marched a total of 500 miles to and from various transit camps."

At the last POW camp, Norwood said there wasn't barbed wire around the enclosure but the North Korean soldiers would stand around the perimeter holding hands. He remembered that as being better than barbed wire.

"We had no contact with the outside world," he recalled. "Everything they told us was propaganda. After a while we got letters from the outside world, but they were censored by the U.S. government and the North Koreans so there wasn't much to read."

Norwood is still upset about how his mother was informed about his POW status.

"She didn't hear anything about me for two years," he said, "Then she got a letter from me. That's how she found out I was alive. That's tacky. She could have had a heart attack. The Army should have informed her before she got the letter. The Army had reclassified me from missing in action to POW status but didn't bother to tell my family until after my mother got that letter."

When he was released, he was shipped back to San Francisco. "The Army handed me money and put me on the street," he said. "They didn't give me a bus ticket, a train ticket or anything to help me get home."

"I came from poverty in Tennessee when I went into the Army in 1947," Norwood recalled. "Here I had two pairs of pants, two pairs of boots, a warm coat and more. I thought it was great. Plus I was paid $75 a month - big money to a boy from the south.

"But most importantly, I was given an allotment of $30 that I sent home to my mother every month and the Army matched that amount. Despite everything, I enjoyed the military," Norwood said. "I put on that uniform, and I felt 10 feet tall."

After Chapman was discharged from the Army, he tried to re-enlist but failed the physical because of all the wounds he had received at the hands of the Chinese and North Koreans.

"But I had a cousin who was an Air Force recruiter and he got me in that branch of service," he said. "Even after everything I had gone through, I stayed in the Air Force 16 years. Like Bill, the military was good to me."

Contact writer Mary Childress at maryc@dailymail.com or 348-4886.

By: Mike Riggs , The Bulletin

Robin Piacini's uncle still hasn't come home after 50 years. With little closure, she turns to her latest helper: a cotton swab.

William Charles Bradley, an Army medic in the 9th Infantry, 2nd Division, disappeared in Kun Ri, North Korea, on Dec. 1, 1950. Piacini, his niece, donated her mitochondrial DNA to the Department of Defense (DOD) in hopes that when the bodies of U.S. POWs are recovered, DNA samples taken from Bradley's remains will match her own.

While DNA has been used to identify the remains of POWs for years, until now, the DOD had to rely on the annual MIA/POW update meetings to get DNA samples. The Pentagon is now testing a program that mails DNA kits to families of missing servicemen in hopes of generating greater response. Pennsylvania is serving as a testing ground.

Relatives swab the inside of their cheeks and send the sample back to the Department of Defense, where it will be added to a DNA databank and matched with remains recovered from theaters of conflict.
"We're still seeking to account for about 8,100 from the Korean War, 1,700 from Vietnam, and about 78,000 from World War II," said Larry Greer, an official at the DOD. "It's a huge task, and DNA is a part of it. With a bone sample from a serviceman and a saliva sample from someone in the maternal bloodline, we can identify a DNA match."

Greer added that currently, the main focus is on World War II and Korea. "The percentage of DNA samples we have on hand for Vietnam is much higher than in the other wars. We're much closer to identifying 100 percent of the remains than with other conflicts."

Greer emphasized that the match will occur only with someone on the maternal side of the family. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from a serviceman's children won't match his own.

"Mitochondrial DNA is different from nuclear DNA," Greer said. Identical mitochondrial DNA can be shared by multiple people and simply denotes "a common ancestor."

Alexander Christensen, a DNA coordinator at the POW/MIA Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii, says that using mtDNA can sometimes complicate the search for a relative as much as clarify.
"Mitochondrial DNA is an exclusionary method of identification. If the mtDNA sequence from an excavated body is the same as that of a living donor, it means they could be related." But it doesn't necessarily mean it's the person the family is looking for.

Christensen, whose job involves cutting sample pieces from the excavated bones and sending it to the Armed Forces DNA identification laboratory, cited one excavation where the mtDNA of two recovered servicemen was identical, but the passenger manifest said no one on the plane was related.
"They could have had a maternal ancestor as far back as 30 generations," he said.

The necessity of a maternal relative is fueling a sense of urgency at the DOD, as members of the World War II and Korean War generations reach their 70s, 80s, and 90s.

"If the family of Private John Smith comes forward and says they know that he is missing, we want their DNA in case they pass away before we identify his remains," Greer said.

"I've had a phone call or two from families where there's no maternal lineage left, and the families have to guess," Piacini said. She emphasized the frustration of getting the DNA samples by saying that her own mother heard about the DNA donations not directly from the DOD but from an ad in the back of a veteran's magazine.

Families' lack of information, not only about the DNA gathering process but also about their relatives' combat experience, is a significant problem.

"When I requested information, I got one page about my uncle and a map of where he went missing," Piacini said.

So she set about to contact men who served with her uncle. "One soldier mentioned his name as being killed in action. Another soldier said he died as a prisoner of war."

Christensen says that Korea has presented a unique obstacle for both excavation teams, who haven't been allowed in the country since 2005, and analysts who are doing their best to find out what really happened to servicemen like Piacini's uncle.

"In Korea, we have a large backlog of remains that we are trying to identify," he said. "In recent years, the biggest problem has been that we didn't have a large enough DNA database. Now, the problem is that a lot of our losses in North Korea are from battlefields we didn't reclaim. We just know that we have hundreds of people missing."

He added that in Korea, it's never "a nice, discreet group of remains. Sometimes it's as many as 400 people who died on a given battlefield."

Piacini believes that the DNA program could help clear the historical mists but that the Department of Defense must do more to alert families about the mtDNA matching program.

"This is something that has to be addressed," she said. "If it's a funding issue, we need to make it real clear to our congressman that helping families find out about their servicemen is one of the highest priorities of our government."

Greer, who is working with Piacini in hopes that Pennsylvania's grassroots MIA groups can get a larger number of families to donate, says that cost is not a deterrent.

"Mailing family members a DNA kit with instructions, a swab and a tube for the sample is a negligible $4-$5," Greer said. "If that little kit can help us identify a serviceman, it's well worth the effort."
Christensen says that donor response has increased exponentially as the program has gained publicity.

As of now, "438 Pennsylvania families have given the DOD their references [mtDNA], and there are 115 Pennsylvania casualties whose relatives' DNA we're looking for," he said.

Greer hopes that the mailings in Pennsylvania will prove successful enough to answer the DOD's questions in the positive.

"Is it productive?" he asked. Does it give us feedback? Do we have enough of a lead to try it with other families? These are the questions we hope to have answered in Pennsylvania."

Piacini echoes his sentiments. "How well we do here in Pennsylvania will determine how well this program does in the rest of the country, that's why we enlisted the veteran's affairs office to help us work county by county to inform people."

Mike Riggs can be reached at mriggs@thebulletin.us.