University of Illinois Chicago researchers helping bring home MIA service members
Students and faculty at the University of Illinois Chicago have been on a mission for the last 15 years, helping to recover the remains of service members who went missing in action decades ago.
For UIC grad student Jessica Bishop, adventure – such as "stumbling over giant boulders" trying to navigate terrain in the Philippines – is the perk of meaningful work.
"You do feel like you're making a difference to people regularly," she said.
She works for UIC's Center for the Recovery and Identification of the Missing – or CRIM.
Anthropology professor John Monaghan is the director of CRIM, which has been on a mission since 2010 to help the U.S. government search for remains of missing service members.
"We're investigating, right now, hundreds of cases," he said.
CRIM partners with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), helping with research, technology and field searches.
The DPAA estimates there are more than 81,000 Americans missing in action from World War II, the Korean War, the Cold War, and the Vietnam War.
"We're not treating people like numbers. We want to know about them, about their heroic actions, the sacrifices they made," Monaghan said.
The CRIM team's recent work in Laos led to the recovery of remains of five U.S. airmen missing in action during the Vietnam War.
"A lot of the individuals that were lost are now accounted for," Monaghan said.
Bishop will make her second trip to the Philippines in the spring.
"It's in a really hard to reach area," she said.
It's meaningful work to bring missing heroes home.
"It's just something that people don't know is happening. It would great if more people knew," Bishop said.
The CRIM teams work mostly in the Philippines, but this work happens all over the world. It can take months or years to excavate a site.
If remains are found, they're sent to a lab in Hawaii for DNA analysis to ultimately identify the missing service member.