POW-MIA Seminar

It's my pleasure to welcome each of you to today's seminar. We're honored to have so many dedicated advocates, department, and auxiliary leaders, volunteers, and veterans joining us today. Your commitment to serving America's disabled veterans continues to strengthen our organization and more importantly improve the lives of those who who have sacrificed for our nation. Thank you. Today's seminar is designed to be informative, engaging, and interactive. At the conclusion of today's presentation, there will be an opportunity for questions and discussion. We encourage everyone to participate, ask questions, and take advantage of the expertise that has been assembled here today. Before introducing our keynote presenter, Miss Jennifer Walsh, and our honorable guest, Carolyn Smith, I want to recognize the distinguished committee that has worked to make this seminar possible. To my right, Donald Peak Jr. has devoted more than five decades to serving both his country and fellow veterans. Don enlisted in the United States Army in 1970 and served until 1973. Following his military service, Donald served as a commissioner for the Indiana Department of Veterans Affairs, led the Indie Vet House, a nonprofit supporting veterans, and has completed specialized peer support and addiction recovery training to better assist those facing difficult challenges. Donald is a past state commander of Indiana 2018 and 19 and currently is on the commanders and agitants executive committee se uh since 2025. His decades of leadership, compassion, and service continue to make a lasting difference in the lives of veterans and their families. Thank you, Donald. Joining Donald is Thomas Kit to my left, department service officer for the DAV Department of Nebraska. Tom grew up on on a Montana farm where he learned the value of hard work before serving 21 years in the United States Air Force. During his military career, he worked as an aircraft engine mechanic, maintenance instructor, quality assurance inspector, and supported strategic air command operations. After retiring from the Air Force, he turn continued to serving our nation through 16 years in federal civil service before joining the disabled American veterans. Since becoming a department service officer in 2013, Tom has assisted thousands of veterans and their dependence throughout Nebraska and the surrounding area in securing the benefits they earn through military service. He has also helped preserve military history by restoring a Vietnam era eighth cavalry helicopter and reuniting five members of its original crew with that aircraft more than 50 years after their service. This memorial is phenomenal. If you have a chance and you're in Omaha, please see it. >> I'll give you a tour. >> Thank you for everything you do, Tom. >> Thanks. Also serving on today's committee is Layman Rose to my right, a respected leader within the disabled American veterans whose dedication to mentoring service officers and supporting veterans continues to strengthen our organization. Layman is a former Marine >> who served in Vietnam in 1968 and 69. He's a former commander of the Department of Florida in 24 and 25. He served on multiple national uh committees. His experience, professionalism, and commitment to ensuring veterans receive quality representation have made him a valued member of this seminar team. Thank you, Layman. And he's not going to want me to do this, but I'm going to do it anyway. Finally, Justin Hart. He's the man in the back walking around making sure this seminar goes without air. He's the assistant national service director for the disabled American veterans. Justin's commitment to serving veterans comes from personal experience. While serving in Iraq in 2003, his Humvey struck an anti-tank mine, throwing him from the vehicle and leaving him seriously injured. During his own recovery and transition from military service, he experienced firsthand how complex the VA claims process could be. With the help of DAV, he successfully navigated that process. And today, he has dedicated his career to ensuring other veterans receive that same level of professional assistance. As assistant national service director, Justin helps oversee DAV's nationwide network of national service offices, supervises professional service staff, and supports training and quality assurance for those representing veterans before the Department of Veterans Affairs. His leadership has helped strengthen DAV's ability to serve hundreds of thousands of veterans and their families each year. Justin's a true leader and we are lucky to have him as our representative with DPAA. Ladies and gentlemen, would you please join me in recognizing Donald Peak, Tom Kit, Layman Rose, and Justin Hart for their outstanding leadership and dedication to America. It's now my distinct honor to introduce our featured speaker this afternoon, Miss Jennifer C. Walsh, principal deputy director for the Defense PM MIA accounting agency, or as we know them, DPAA. As the principal deputy director, Miss Walsh serves as the second ranking official within the agency and works alongside the director in leading one of the department's most solemn and meaningful missions, as she described this morning, to provide the fullest possible accounting of our nation's missing service members from World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the Persian War, and more recent wars and conflicts. She is responsible for helping formulate agency policy, overseeing business development, and expanding outreach initiatives that support families and fulfill our nation's enduring commitment to those who had never returned home. The Defense PIA accounting agency refers to this mission as the sacred obligation. Those are simply not words. They define the very purpose of this agency. and were actioned as presented this morning with bringing home a record number 231 of our brothers and sisters last year. DPAA explains that this sacred obligation reflects our nation's moral promise to every man and woman who has worn the uniform that no one who made the ultimate sacrifice will ever be forgotten or left behind. It's a commitment to search for those who remain missing, to recover and identify them whenever possible, and to finally provide answers and closure to the families who have waited sometimes for generations. Miss Walsh brings extraordinary experience to this sacred mission. Before joining DPAA, she served as the Department of Defense performance improvement officer and director of administration and management where she led efforts to improve efficiency, accountability, and innovation across the Department of Defense. She also served as the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs, held numerous senior leadership positions when the off within the office of the under secretary of defense for policy and served on the faculty of both the college of international security affairs of the national war college at the national defense university. Her career has encompassed homeland defense, mission assurance, countering weapons of mass destruction, technology, security policy, strategic communications, and strengthening defense relationships with allies throughout Europe, Eurasia, the Middle East, Asia, and the Western Hemisphere. Miss Walsh is a graduate of the prestigious National War College, earned a master's of public affairs from the Lynden B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and received her Bachelor of Arts from the Louisiana Scholars College at Northwestern State University. Earlier this year, while presiding over the Department of Defense Distinguished Civilian Career Service Award Ceremony, I found this online. Miss Wall spoke about the meaning of public service, saying, "You've taken public service to another level. You're being recognized for your contributions that you delivered within and through your organizations, but that have consequence and positive ripple effects for so many around you, including larger communities outside of the department and outside of government. Well, these words resonate deeply with the mission of the disabled American veterans. Whether we are helping a veteran obtain earned benefits, advocating on Capitol Hill, transporting veterans to medical appointments, or supporting families of the missing, our work creates those same positive ripple effects throughout our communities and across this nation. This afternoon, Miss Walsh will share updates on the Defense PMI accounting ay's worldwide mission, recent recovery identifications, and ongoing initiatives. Following her pres presentation, she has grac graciously agreed to take your questions. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in giving a warm DAV welcome to Miss Jennifer C. Walsh, principal deputy director of the defense PM MIA accounting agency. >> Good afternoon. It's great to see all of y'all here. This committee and you all are aware of what we at DPAA do and thank you so much for that kind introduction. Um, you know who we work with. I mean, you're part of that community. We're grateful for you and you know who we're all working for. It's our missing and their families. I will recap in this presentation some of the facts and figures provide that I provided this morning. I'll provide some greater insight into our team's focus and accomplishments, review recent, current, and upcoming events and initiatives. And I really want to make sure that we have more than enough time to hear from Carolyn Smith and her personal experience and her family's experience of knowing what it's like to live with someone who is unaccounted for from a prior conflict and then welcoming them home. Thank you. Okay, you saw this. If you were in the presentation hall this morning, you saw this slide already. So, I'll just recap real quickly. The numbers are daunting of how many personnel, US personnel are still unaccounted for. But I want you to know, and I can just tell by the feel in this room, your very presence, you, the DAV, DPAA, so many Americans, we are not daunted by this number. We are committed and we are doing everything we can to find our missing. The photos on the bottom left of this slide are just snapshots of what it's like to be on a field mission that DPAA runs. On the far left you can see some of our team members in the sifting process. So whether we are in aquatic or terrestrial um excavations, anything we pick up is going through a sifting process. We have experts that know what was the material used, what were all of the parts in the equipment that we believe our members were were serving in when they went missing. So we are looking for material items as well as human remains and we have experts that are just top-notch that can do that. The next photo in from the left is in one of our land missions and you can say see it is an archaeological dig. It is amazing what our fellow Americans are out there doing along with a lot of international partners. So through advocacy from any number of organizations and individuals, technology developments that we pioneer within our agency or that are pioneered from the private sector and their volunteering to be a partner with DPAA, the continuation of resources, your taxpayer dollars, and all types of partnerships, whether it is inind, in spirit or in person. All of these are essential to our delivering results and many of them are gamechanging. So our our mission and the results are what matters. But I do want to shine a little bit of a spotlight on your fellow Americans who are making this happen. They are military, civilian, and contractor personnel who are driven by and dedicated to this solemn mission. They have volunteered. They go where our research indicates our missing may be. They sometimes put themselves in harm's way because we ask them to go sometimes to dangerous or perilous environments. Because if we have research that the last known location of a service member was a plane crash that went into the side of the mountain, our f folks are going to that side of the mountain. They're going to look and they're going to do everything they can to find. We are in Europe, the Mediterranean region, the Indopacific regions and we have a very robust program of disinterment of cemeteries managed by the Veterans Administration and the American Battle Monuments Commission. We disenter service personnel who were previous who were buried as unknowns because we now have the technology the DNA technology >> where we can identify most of them. So our team of over 700 people represents an array of disciplines and expertise levels that truly are top-notch. We have our headquarters office in Arlington, Virginia. We have a forensics laboratory in Nebraska and we have our a laboratory and office building in Hawaii on Joint Base Hickham, Pearl Harbor. That's where 60% of our team operates from. We also have military detachments in Germany, Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand. So where we go? Well, where we have been and where we are right now in fiscal year 26 over 62 field missions. We have been or are in North America, the Pacific, Europe, Asia. We are making disinterments from a number of cemeteries around the world, including the US, Europe, and the Philippines. The last point on this slide talks about how we communicate and connect with families of the missing. You'll hear more about that from Miss Smith. We host every year family member update meetings where we can bring together the families of the missing. They can ask for a case review to meet with our experts to understand is there any new information, any research or any of the missions that you're going on this year close to where their family member is. We want those family members to know what we're doing, how we're doing, what more we need, or what different we're looking for so that we can give them answers and get one step closer to finding their family member. So, I'd like to provide you a little bit more granularity of what we are doing, who we're doing it with, and why it matters. 231 identifications in fiscal year 25. That was a record for sure. We were able to achieve that in part based on an increase in our budget for the two years prior. I mentioned this morning the facts of we did take a budget reduction like a lot of parts of the Department of War in fiscal year 26 and we are anticipating a further reduction in fiscal year 27. This is simply about a normal department of war process of prioritization. The department goes through very rigorous budget discussions and there are lots of hard choices. Fully understand that. So I am not here to complain because as I mentioned this morning I still recognize 160 million of our taxpayer dollars is a lot of money. But part of my job is to is to be able to correlate in those decision processes but also in communicating with you what is the cause and the effect. What is the correlation between the appropriation that we receive and then the mission results that we can deliver. So as I mentioned this morning in fiscal year 25 we were able to conduct 105 field missions. Fiscal year 26, we are conducting 62. And if our budget is at that $160 million appropriated level for fiscal year 27, we are going to be able to field only 48 field missions. As I also mentioned this morning, Senator Fiser from Nebraska has committed to supporting a $40 million ad to the authorization bill for DPAA's operations. She also sits on the appropriations committee and so we fully anticipate that her support will shine through in the appropriations process as well. But I just want to assure you, however much money Congress appropriates to DPAA, you have our commitment that we will make good use of every single one of those dollars. I'd like to spend a little bit of time talking about partnerships and innovation. I referenced that this morning. This is an area of growth and great opportunity. We are partnering with universities, ROC units, innovation and technology companies, bringing in people, expertise, new ideas, new technology capabilities and applying them to our our mission sets. It's pretty extraordinary what these partnerships have already yielded. I'll give you a couple of examples of entities that are based in uh in Florida since since we're all here. Uh we are working partnering with um an Orlando based company called search. Uh they focus on maritime archaeology and they have been conducting missions with us on our behalf off the coast of Vietnam and Italy and they're going to be back in Vietnam in August. We have a number of missions with Task Force Dagger, also based in Florida. And this is special operations divers and they I'm told they have other skills too. and they are working they are supporting our underwater uh missions. The University of Central Florida has an innovation project uh on the use of laser spectroscopy. Okay, I am not going to pronounce that correctly. Sorry. But what it does I can tell you that is they can determine if material we have found underwater could be human remains. I mean, talk about wow. Florida State is part of a national network of partners with historical research expertise and data analysis. So, they may be able to find things in data that already exist or they may be able to um to find new uh new information out there that we haven't uh we haven't been able to get to. If you are interested in learning more about our partnerships and innovation program, our website um is is a great a great starter uh starter tool to get to get more info on that. The photo on this slide, you will see the flags of the United States and the Republic of Korea. On June 5th of this year, the President of the Republic of Korea hosted a joint repatriation ceremony. remains repatriation. The South Koreans in their search for their missing came were able to recover the remains of three United States missing personnel. Yep. In the course of our recovery work, we were able to recover the remains of 10 Republic of Korea unidentified personnel. This was a ceremony where we returned the remains to the appropriate country. I had the distinct honor to participate in that ceremony. It was really something. Was really something. and our partnership with the Republic of Korea on recovery operations is truly phenomenal. So, I wanted to share that photo with you because that is the photo of the remains during the ceremony with the flags on top of them and then the honorable carry of the US remains then came back to our forensics lab in Hawaii. And so our team will be working to identify those those service personnel. While I was in Korea, I also had the opportunity to meet with Ministry of National Defense, Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs and our partner forensics lab. The acronym is MACRI. And I can tell you the US South Korea relationship for recovering person missing personnel is stronger than ever. Also earlier this year, we signed a memorandum of understanding with the Solomon Islands. This memorandum and this agreement is going to give us more access to more parts of that territory where we have information to believe that we're going to be able to find more of our missing. We also are continuing to have cooperation with China and you can see from the slide that we restored cooperation two years ago and we have had three successful missions to date including two this summer. We have very limited engagement, however, with Russia, but we continue to keep that that flame alive through the USRussia joint commission. And we learned recently that the Russians are moving in a direction of a of naming a commissioner to actually start discussions again with us at the end of at the end of this month. um or I'm sorry the end of next week we will be conducting technical talks and this is where we have experts from countries that we partner with coming in and sharing what's going on where do we think we can make the most uh most progress in a particular country in early September we will be hosting in Hawaii a scientific summit where we are bringing in top forensic scientists from around the world who also focus on uh remains recovery and identification uh capabilities. And then in late September, we are hosting an innovation forum. And this is bringing in some of our private sector partners to help us think through how we can do more and better with the resources we have or to be introduced to capabilities that are just coming onto the market and how we can bring those to bear to our mission. This year's focus will be on big data analytics management and interoperability using AI for underwater archaeology operations. So I just want to share two quick vignettes, two stories, success stories. The first of the two will take take you to Italy. In January of 1944, a B24H was on a mission in Italy. The picture on the lower right shows what the flight path was supposed to be. That B24 took enemy fire from the air and ground. That fire brought the aircraft down on the aisle of Morgo. Three crew members parachuted out, but German forces captured the navigator who had survived. and also the bodies of the pilot and co-pilot. Seven crew members were missing. In 2010, we began investigating and this in our search for the seven. The photo in the middle of the page, it's hard to see, I am confident, but there are two yellow arrows that point to a red dot. That's where the plane went down. And the photo on the top right, that was an aerial view taken on April 10th, 1945. The red circle shows what we had understood to be an impact crater. The unique environment of the crash site resulted in remarkable preservation of artifacts like the Silk Flight map pictured at the bottom left and a crew member's Bible pictured next to it. To successfully recover the site, partners had to dredge a canal to float recovery barges like those pictured in the top two photos. They had to float these to get them into position. The large excavator pictured top left retrieved sediment and evidence from the site, while the smaller excavator pictured at the top right collected that evidence from the two large bins in the center of the photo and distributed it to the screens of waiting recovery team members who sifted for the evidence. So on an earlier slide, you saw the sifting. That's what that was about. Those seven missing crew members are now accounted for and they will be returned to their families in the coming months so that they can make arrangements for a burial with military honors. Second story I'd like to share with you. This is Sergeant Leonard McNeel of Somerville, Massachusetts, and Orlando, Florida. It turns out he was trained as a B29 tail gunner. His plane was shot down and crashed on Easter Day, that's April 2nd, 1945, during a bombing raid over Tokyo. Sergeant McNeel survived and escaped the crash, but he was subsequently captured by Japanese forces and held in the Tokyo prison. He died in the Tokyo prison fire on May 26, 1945, but his remains were not identified immediately. Many people perished in that fire. In recovery of the remains that were recovered, some were able to be identified at the time, but many were not. They were buried in graves marked unknown. In September of 2022, DPAA disinterred 39 graves marked unknown that were associated with the Tokyo prison fire. And over three years, DPAA and the armed forces medical examiner system using anthropological assessment, mitochondrial DNA, Y chromosome, and nuclear single nucleotide polymorphism or SNP. You'll hear it referred to as SNAP testing. And they match these results to Sergeant McNeel's family references. We announced publicly just a few weeks ago on July 21st that Sergeant Leonard J. McNeel was accounted for. >> He will be buried November 11th, 2026 in his hometown. So these are the words that come to mind when I think about our mission and I don't mean just DPAA I mean our mission and for me this is a mission for our whole country. I want to say thank you to this committee. Thank you to all of you who have come here today for your continued attention, advocacy, and airtime to make sure that our unaccounted for are not forgotten and that their families take comfort in knowing that we are not forgetting. >> I would like to introduce now a very special American. Carolyn Smith has agreed to join us today to give you a personal family account of what it's like to be on the side of waiting, hoping, honoring, and welcoming their family member home. Miss Smith, >> good afternoon and thank you everyone for coming. Thank you Jennifer for that generous introduction. 24 October 2025. Dear miracle workers of the department of PM MIA accounting agency. I've been composing this letter to you since the day my sister said they found Uncle Bill. These words gave our family a gift none of us even considered possible. I am the second oldest niece of Captain Bill Bianci who is identified on 11 August 2025 after 80 years. It has been a whirlwind of emotions and events. Four of us were flown to DC for the PM MIA recognition day ceremony and met with Secretary of War Pete Hegsath, your boss, Kelly McKG, and general counsel Joseph Holtz. We learned Joe Holtz had graduated from the same high school Cathedral in New Minnesota as all of us. It was a reunion of classmates on the Pentagon's River Parade Field. We've done many interviews since Washington. And then two days ago, I received a call from a major news station in Minneapolis. They too wanted to talk. And the first question they always ask is, "How do you feel when you hear the words accounted for?" The truth is, every single interviewer since that day in August has asked the same question. They ask just as this reporter did, and then they wait for some profound thought or cleverly phrased reply. There are seven children in the family of one of Bill's sisters, our mom. All are educated, as if that will help us with the formulation of some deeply moving response. I listen carefully whenever my brothers or sisters try to answer. I struggle with my own reaction, but no words are ever enough to keep his memory alive. Over the years, we had small monuments erected in New and in South Dakota where he went to college. We offer a scholarship at SDSU for students interested in ROC. We had our local American Legion renamed Ciphford Bianci. We lived with headlines like gradually a town forgets its war hero. Most of us visited his grave at Punch Bowl Cemetery in Hawaii where we learned he was not buried. We now know that as truth. We even made a PBS documentary. We've always celebrated the spirit of our heroic Uncle Bill. You DPA gave us the answers. So, thank you sincerely, Carolyn Marty Smith. The simple words, they found Uncle Bill, kept us on a journey our family didn't even know we were still on. The voyage started on January 9th, 1945 in the hold of the Anoro Maru at Teo Harbor, Taiwan, and moved through the date of his identification, 11 August 2025, a diff distance of 7,100 miles and 80 years, 7 months, and two days. Bill was born Willabald Charles Biane. And yes, I said Willough. His grandfather's Germanic name so brutal he only and always called himself Bill. When he graduated from college in Brookings, South Dakota in 1939, the dean read his name as Willal. His friends were horrified. He assiduously hid that from them for years. Bill, the adored brother of four sisters, was born 12 March 1915 and lived on the Biani Holstein Lagghorn farm in New Minnesota. His father died in an accident. His not the dog the dog his mother sold the farm. He managed to finish his degree in animal husbandry and ROC. And then he felt the call of the looming war. So he enlisted and requested overseas placement. The government sent him east on a luxury liner through Hawaii landing in Sububi Bay. And he was almost immediately made commander of Company D 45th Infantry of the Philippine Scouts, the best trained and possibly the best prepared US Army Division at the outset of the war. He, as so many young men of the time, was far from home and in an alien environment. So he became an ineterate letter letter writer. And fortunately for me, my family is composed of letter savers. The wonder at his new life filled pages with stories. He got lost in the jungle, was terrified by a huge snake, finally found a beach so he could trace his way back to camp where he was the officer in charge. Another time, he and a buddy were at a local bar. At the next table, a couple of men were speaking German. Remember, this is 1941. Not suspecting that anyone would understand them, they spoke loudly, as beer drinkers often do in German. Bill, who spoke German, spied on them and then reported back to the CEO what he had heard. I would love to have a fascinating conclusion with Peter Lori and Humphrey Bogard or something like that, but it is lost to the years and it is lost to the war. One of my favorite stories was found in a letter to my mom. I'll quote exactly from the letter that he wrote on 20 July 1941. Last week, two of us went downtown shopping. We each bought 16 yards of linen to send home. When we brought the linen home, our housekeeper said it was cotton and made in the USA. So now I can't return it because I bought it from a peddler on the street. There are thousands of them. I'll never be able to find him again. I guess I'll have some athletic shorts made. and we need dish towels for the company. Five months from this letter, where his concerns were making athletic shorts and dish towels out of mistakenly purchased USA cotton from a street vendor, the war would start in the Philippines. 8 December 1941, 10 hours after Pearl Harbor. In six months from its writing, he volunteered to lead a sorty into what was called the tool pocket. The battle was so fierce it merited the young lieutenant who was worried about lynen for his sister, the United sister in the United States, the Congressional Medal of Honor. His citation reads, "For conspicuous conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in the action against the enemy 3 February 1942 near Begak Province in Baton, Philippine Islands. When the rifle platoon of another company was ordered to wipe out two strong enemy machine gun nests, First Lieutenant Bianci voluntarily and have his own initiative advanced with the platoon leading part of the men. When wounded early in the action by two bullets through the left hand, he did not stop for first aid, but discarded his rifle and began firing a pistol. He located a machine gun nest and personally silenced it with grenades. When wounded the second time by the by machine gun bullets through his chest muscles, First Lieutenant Bianci climbed on top of a disabled tank, manned its anti-aircraft machine gun, and fired into the strongly held enemy position until knocked completely off the tank by another severe wound. The original certificate of the Medal of Honor now hangs in the Brown County Historical Society new exhibit called A Newm Hero, Captain Willal Bianci, and it bears the date 27 March 1942. We believe he was still in the hospital recovering when he was informed. He healed and returned to active duty. One month later, the Philippine Islands fell to the Japanese. 9 April 1942, Uncle Bill along with 70 to 80,000 American and Filipino soldiers endured the baton death march. Driven by thirst, hunger, and exhaustion. If you fell, you died. Survivors reported he went down up and down the line encouraging and helping men to keep walking. He then spent 21 months interred in three Japanese P camps, Bilabed, Cavana, Tuan, and Camp O'Donnell. As the end of the war approached, PS were placed aboard what were aptly called hell ships bound for Japan. Bill survived the mistaken bombing of the first ship, the Oro Maru, but he died in the hold of the second ship, the Anoro Maru on 9 January 1949. That was 3 years and six months from his last letter to our mom. I wonder now about the change that took place in with him in that time span. We have records from other PS who lived. They talk about his lifesaving actions in the camps. One of his jobs was to asssure that rations were allocated correctly to fellow soldiers. This was a huge problem for starving men. He was placed in charge because he could be trusted to do the right thing for everyone. We have notifications that he also started a garden which fed both soldiers and their captives. It appears the character of my uncle didn't really change by all the events that the war put him through. Remember I mentioned Teo Harbor in Taiwan after the accidental bombing on the unmarked Japanese ship in Norro Maru by pilots from the USS Hornet. He and 421 others were thrown into nets, taken off the wreck, and buried in a mass grave on the beach. In 1946, the government disinterred the soldiers and moved them to section Q, Hunch Bowl, Hawaii, to multiply stacked coffins in graves with markers labeled 15 unknowns, 20 unknowns. His honorable carry began when DPAA sent a team to Hawaii. Uncle Bill and his lost fellow soldiers were disinterred, flown to Afett Air Force Base, Omaha, Nebraska, and into the capable hands of Dr. Carrie Lagard and her team of sociologists and forensic anthropologists. Four members of my family were given a tour of the facility in November, which is ironically in the Martin building where the Anola Gay was built. As Dr. Lagard filled us in on the work that was being done there. We watched a technician through a large window trying to match clavicles. Did I mention that the room is entirely filled with bones? The technician diligently labored her way around a table to find the exact clavicle match. That's only one small step in the process of the difficulty of mass grave identification. We noticed bones were often labeled with colored post-it notes. My my sister Sue is retired from 3M. So when we returned to New Alm, we sent the team boxes of Post-it notes as a thank you gift. Offet is where we met first met our uncle since none of us was alive the year he died. His honorable carry next went to Dallas, Texas on a or a flight on American Airlines Medal of Honor plane which was designed by Randy Stiltinger. My sister Jean and her son Patrick were sent there to be with Uncle Bill on the next step. Randy Stilinger was also on the plane and he talked to the FA passengers about how very fortunate they were to be on an airplane with a true American hero. When they landed at the Minneapolis runway, two fire trucks discharged water cannons over the plane as it slowly passed to the gate. six of us with our families, the press who had already interviewed us, our new Walm entourage that included the ciphered biane legion riders had had to leave their choppers off the runway, the hearse from the Minnesota Valley Funeral Home, a full police escort led by the chief of police, Dave Borard, who is in charge of our dignified motorcade home, and of course, the person most in control of the proceedings for this day and in the future for the funeral. Someone who has been described as the best DAV agitant in the state of Minnesota, Greg Peterson. We watched tearfully as the flag draped coffin slowly descended from the hold into the capable hands of the soldiers of the Minnesota Armed Forces Service Center, Minnesota soil at last. And then our bus broke down on the tarmac. delaying our departure by almost two hours. The plan had been to inform towns on the route so people could come out and now we were two hours late. But they were still there waiting to see Uncle Bill home. They were there on the overpasses and on the roadsides and outside their homes and their farms and their American legions with their cars and their bikes and their fire trucks and their businesses and large earthmoving equipment decorated with flags and their families standing at attention saluting hands over hearts. One very old soldier holding his flag on a pole with one hand and kneeling on one knee with his wife standing far behind him, her hands in prayer. I spent 27 years with the military teaching students in Vboden, Germany and Okinawa, Japan. I stood at movie theaters before the show started when they played the Star Spangle Banner. I got out of my car to stand at attention. If I was on base at 5:00 when retreat was played, I was seasoned. Yet that day, looking at all of this out of the bus window, I cried. I didn't know saluting could make me cry. I guess it does now. I found the following posted on my Facebook page a couple of days later. It was written by the owner of the Corner Pizza of Winthre, Minnesota, one of the places we pass through. In a small town like ours, service hits close to home. Some came home to parades. Some came home to quiet lives, and some didn't come home at all. Today, we remember them, and we carry their sacrifice forward with respect. Respect isn't just a word. It looks like taking a moment of silence. It looks like teaching our kids why this matters. That's how we honor our fallen. It started with blue skies and a few old men quietly placing flags across town. And then a town showed up to welcome Captain Bianci home. The funeral itself, Saturday 2, May, was an event held at the New Alm Armory. Our governor, Tim Waltz, proclaimed the day, Captain Bill Bianci Day, and ordered state flags to be flown at half mass. Posters and flags and pictures of my uncle appeared all over town. Relatives we didn't even know we had materialized. A man drove from Illinois. His father had been sitting next to Uncle Bill in the hole of the Anoro Maru when the bomb hit and he came to talk to us about it. His grandfather lived to tell the story. Uncle Bill did not. We had spectacular speakers who flew in from all over the country. National Guard's Major General Shawn Many, Commissioner Brad Lindseay of the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs, Dr. Kim Mitchell, chief of staff of the Medal of Honor Society, general counsel, retired Navy captain, and fellow Cathedral High School of New Minnesota graduate Joseph Holtz represented DPAA. Senator Amy Clolobachar, always an excellent speaker and personally a huge help for every single step our family took. Started with starting with our very first day was with us. I found pictures on DPA's website. AA's website of the next presenter standing deep in a deep in punchbowl section Q grave dusted with earth. Dr. Carrie Lagarde as she respectfully lifted bones out of a coffin that had broken open after all these years. Think of it. Dr. Lagard was there from day one. And now she was with Uncle Bill to see him off. At the cemetery, the Minnesota funeral honors honors team presented our flag, our family with his flag. A bugler played taps. We had the requisite 21 gun salute. They gave us the bullets. The new Alm battery, the only townbased Civil War era militia still in existence with its original firepower. I mean, the cannon did a farewell cannon salute. The graveside service ended with a flyover. Hearts stocked at soldiers rest as three Blackhawks of the 34th Expeditionary Combat Aviation Brigade flew low and slow over all of us and over Uncle Bill. Remember I told you we had the best DAV coordinator in the state of Minnesota. So that ends the story of my uncle. Is it a happy ending? Not for my grandma or my mom and her sisters. A life with so much promise was gone at 29. But thanks to a DNA request made by the Department of P, MIA accounting agency in 2018, his nieces and nephews, his state and his town had him home where he is loved. If you are still waiting for someone you love to be found, they are still looking. I watched Josh Gates on Expedition Unknown and a dive team from DPAA go into the sunken wreck of the AO oryoko Maru on TV just last week. You have support and you have people who care. Minnesota's Senator Amy Clolobachar read the following ending into the Congressional Medal during the 119th session of Congress. We can never serve any veteran in quite the same way they served us. Whether they served many decades ago or in our mo most recent confl conflicts, our obligation is to ensure that they have the support and the care that they earned. So today, Mr. President, I rise to honor Captain Will Yiani, an American hero.