Commemorating the 73rd Anniversary of the Attack on Pearl Harbor

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1. Good morning, Thank you for this information, it is wonderful. As we are coming from the main land (my daughter is marching in the parade), I was just wondering if you knew the channel that this will be on? I would like to be able to see if they do live feeds, so that my family here is able to see our daughter march.
   Thank you,
   Sarah McClaine

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2. Today, Seaman Earl Leroy Morrison of the USS Arizona lies in Section Q, Grave 1147 in the Punchbowl underneath a marker that names him as “Unknown”. Seaman Morrison is an example of the dysfunction of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) in identifying and returning American heroes to their families. Investigators at JPAC have been pleading with the inept JPAC command and leadership for Seaman Morrison’s identification for years without result. A lengthy list of scandals regarding the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) has now been publically exposed by NBC, CBS, NPR, Stars and Stripes, the Associated Press, and a host of other media investigative reports. Scathing official reports by multiple federal agencies painted efforts by JPAC as dysfunctional, duplicative, inefficient, wasteful and so poorly managed and led that JPAC simply could not do the job assigned to it. No matter how hard the JPAC Central Identification Laboratory (CIL) and JPAC management tried to spin the fact that only 385 identifications in seven years with an annual budget far exceeding $100 million was someone else’s fault, the American public and Congress refused to buy this hogwash. The JPAC CIL finally admitted that it takes them an average of ELEVEN YEARS to make an identification after remains are recovered. Investigations by the Department of Defense found 600 to 1,000 sets of American servicemen’s remains in cardboard boxes in the JPAC Laboratory that the CIL is incapable of identifying because their methods are antiquated and obsolete. The American public and families of MIAs who accepted the smoke and mirrors from the JPAC public relations machine for years through fraud, phony “arrival home” ceremonies, and out right lies; feel angry, humiliated, and betrayed beyond belief. A large number of current and former employees of JPAC cooperated with these investigations because they are dismayed, disillusioned, disheartened, disgusted, and still disbelieving of what they experienced at JPAC. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, in congressional testimony, spoke for many of them when he called JPAC “disgraceful”. Despite being accused of being “vindictive and “disgruntled”, many past and present employees braved severe retaliation by the JPAC management to come forward with the truth. There are many truly dedicated men and women who work at JPAC in non-management roles who believe in the mission. Researchers, military recovery specialists, and field investigators who hack through jungles, climb mountains, and wade rivers only to be sabotaged in their work by a completely dysfunctional command deserve great credit for their efforts to expose JPAC’s corrupt operation. In the final analysis, no one with any common sense whatsoever believed the excuses of the JPAC Laboratory Scientific Director and other members of the leadership clique at JPAC when their disgraceful actions became public. The Secretary of Defense finally ordered JPAC dissolved and the entire operation be “overhauled”. The changes are long overdue. The JPAC Scientific Director has now announced his ouster. Yet, there are many more in the JPAC command hierarchy who continue to make excuses and are trying to keep their high paying jobs through their usual finger pointing, denials of responsibility, and boasts that they can “overhaul” their own severe dysfunction. These people learned these techniques from the JPAC Scientific Director and are intent on perpetuating the usual JPAC organizational culture of obstruction, retaliation, and a “it can’t be done” attitude. They cannot be allowed to stay and infect the new organization being formed to replace JPAC and its equally dysfunctional sister, the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO). It is now incumbent upon the Secretary of Defense to ensure that his pledge to the American public for a “paradigm shift” away from “outdated, institutionalized thinking” at JPAC becomes a reality. Such needed massive reform cannot be accomplished by changing the names of the organizations, removing just a few individuals, re-shuffling the same poor managers to new desks and titles in a brand new $70 million dollar building at Hickam, and allowing those who have supported the complacent attitude of not keeping up with modern science such as DNA, to keep their jobs. To do so would only allow the same infectious disease of arrogance and lies to the families of American heroes to take root all over again. The disaster at JPAC has been added to the VA Hospital, Dover Mortuary, Arlington Cemetery, and the Viet Nam Unknown debacles. Everyone at any level of management and culpability in the many JPAC scandals must be removed to insure that the organizational dysfunction at JPAC is finally ended…forever. Only then will Seaman Morrison receive the honor of having his name restored to the marker above his grave.

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