[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 104 (Tuesday, July 24, 2001)]
[House]
[Page H4435]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 KOREAN WAR MIA'S SUPPORT INTERNET-BASED INITIATIVE CALLED FINDING THE 
                                FAMILIES

  (Mr. ISRAEL asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. ISRAEL. Mr. Speaker, we recently celebrated the 51st anniversary 
of the beginning of the Korean War, and among those that we honored 
were the 6,000 soldiers in that war who were designated as Missing In 
Action.
  The cooling of tensions on the Korean Peninsula have allowed an 
unprecedented opportunity for the repatriation of the remains of those 
lost servicemen. At the same time, recent advances in DNA technology 
have made it possible to identify those remains once a DNA sample is 
obtained from a living descendent.
  An organization called the Korean War Project has set up an Internet-
based initiative called Finding the Families to locate the 6,000 
families of servicemen missing in action from the Korean War. I have 
placed a link on my government Web site to their homepage so that the 
citizens of my district can search the directory of missing soldiers 
from their area in an attempt to find a living descendant who can 
provide a DNA sampling. I urge my colleagues to provide matching 
support in tracking down those missing families by providing similar 
links on their own Web sites, in addition to generating more public 
awareness of this important issue.
  Mr. Speaker, our missing heroes deserve more than just our passive 
pledge not to forget, they deserve our active support. Supporting the 
Finding Families program is a way to do just that.

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