Group Trying To Collect Photos of Every American Vietnam War Casualty
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - The History Channel made a stop in Philadelphia today as part of its project called "A Call To Photos."
Jan Scruggs, president of the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial in Washington, DC, is working with the History Channel to match every one of the approximately 58,000 American casualties of the Vietnam War with a photograph of that person.
"We have about half of those from Pennsylvania now," Scruggs told KYW Newsradio today. "We need another 1,700 photographs to complete it."
Not only will the process be documented on the History Channel, the photos will also be used at a center to be built next to the Vietnam War memorial to tell the story of those who were killed.
"Construction is planned for November 2012 and we should be open in 2014," Scruggs said. "The center is an underground education center that teaches about duty, honor, and country, and does this by using the photographs of the casualties."
Do they expect to obtain photos for every single American killed in the Vietnam War?
"We'll get most," Scruggs says. "We've found once you get to the last three percent it becomes almost impossible. But by the time it's built we'll have them all."
To upload a photo, go to buildthecenter.org. (The web site was having technical problems on Thursday.)
Reported by Hadas Kuznits, KYW Newsradio 1060
