A summing up & a new direction

I feel pretty good, but am far from feeling smug about it...My efforts and those of others helping me have finally resulted in Congress getting off its ass in directing the Pentagon to repatriate the remains of the hundreds of guys who still lie in Tarawa sixty-six years later, after the battle of "Bloody Tarawa," during November, 1943. (That doesn't mean, of course, that the military will actually do it.).

I'm in the process of setting up a non-profit corporation that will receive charitable contributions--for tax credit--to finance my filmed visit to a number of Pacific War battlefields, e,g., Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Okinawa, Palau and other sites. The purpose: to show compelling evidence that the remains of the fallen are still there, e.g., the tail assembly of the downed plane, the dogtags or other evidence of the remains of the MIA, what natives in the area concerned can tell us about the dead American, etc. Five films in all will be produced at a cost of 1 million, a significant part of which to defray the cost of private jet flights to many of the battle sites, sites that simply can't be reached by comercial flights.

Readers of my blogs will recall that almost 80,000 WWII MIAs from WWII are still "there," where they fell in battles in Europe and in the Pacific. The Pentagon admits that upwards of 35,000 are "recoverable." That doesn't mean that the Military will make an effort to recover these guys. In fact,  I've just learned that 3,000 WWII MIAs have been recently identified, including the exact location of their remains, along with other information that will permit their speedy repatriation, but this will not be done because there ain't any money to pay for the effort.,

What the hell...Nearly all of the Viet Nam MIAs have been recovered and repatriated--thanks to the nation-wide campaign during the 70's to recover them--"You Are Not Forgotten"--Remember?

Unlike Viet Nam and Iraq, too, for that matter--and similarly unpopular and unnecessary wars, it''s generally ackmnowledged that WWII was a "necessary" and even a "popular" in the sense that virtually the entire nation was involved. The anomaly remains: in dumb wars, we recover the dead. In good wars--the hell with the "Greatest Generation."

Comments

[leon cooper]

Hello, Ron
You can reach me at leoncooper@verizon.net

[Thean]

I believe its:
Leoncooper@verizon.net

Mr. Cooper,
Thank you for your service & never forgetting the fallen!

[ron bagby]

i just finished watching mr. cooper's documentary on the military channel. my father served in wwII. i could never get him to talk about it. he landed on normandy. i came to this site hoping to find a way to write directly to mr. cooper thanking him for his service. i have not found anything that i think links him to anything i might write. i'm hoping to find an e-mail address or something. i do not expect a reply but would dearly like to know he somehow reads something from an appreacitive person. i served in the navy from 1963 to 1971. i will keep looking. i have found several sites that require me to sign up and belong to something called bml80 yadda yadda. i will keep looking for a link to the amazing leon cooper.