The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawai'i is tripling its lab space for the analysis of American war dead, a move that should help speed up identification for families around the nation whose wait may seem like a lifetime — and sometimes is — for the repatriation of loved ones.

By October, the approximately 22-table lab space will grow to about 65 tables with the completion of a $700,000 addition to existing facilities at Hickam Air Force Base, along with the opening of a second lab in Building 220 at Pearl Harbor, being renovated for $1.8 million.

The current 57,000 square feet of office and lab space is growing to 81,000 feet, with an even larger 140,000-square-foot replacement facility expected to be built at Hickam beginning in 2010, officials said.

A dozen mobile units and trailers used for office space will be eliminated under the plan.

The mission of the 354-member unit, which this year has a budget of $53.7 million, is to achieve the "fullest possible accounting of all Americans missing as a result of the nation's past conflicts."

JPAC investigates losses, recovers the remains of missing Americans, and identifies and returns service members to families for burial, but the challenge the lab faces in terms of the sheer number of missing is daunting.

Short of a budget increase sufficient to significantly add to the number of overseas missions and personnel in Hawai'i, the lab has been making smaller improvements with help from Congress.

CHANGE IN MANDATE

In addition to the new lab space, by the end of the year, the command expects the Defense Department to adjust the unit's mandate, which currently focuses almost two-thirds of its efforts to Vietnam War troops, with Korean War and World War II troops roughly splitting up the remainder.

For the Hawai'i-based command that grew out of Southeast Asia recovery efforts started in 1973, such a change would likely provide greater parity to families who have family members missing from World War II and Korea.

That may or may not benefit Janice Watterson Snyder, 63, an Indianola, Wash., resident whose father's B-17 bomber went down in Germany in March 1945, two weeks after she was born.

A German researcher found the crash site in 2000, and the information was passed on to JPAC in 2003, Snyder said. She hopes they'll investigate and make a recovery, but the intervening years add up quickly.

JPAC is able to make about 70 identifications a year. U.S. Rep. John McHugh, R-N.Y., recently said 1,200 to 1,400 sets of remains are at the Hawai'i lab for identification.

The lab JPAC is setting up in Building 220 at Pearl Harbor will be used to lay out 208 boxes of Korean War remains — perhaps representing 400 U.S. service members — that North Korea turned over to the U.S. between 1990 and 1994.

'WAITING AND HOPING'

DNA samples already have been taken, some IDs have been made, and having the space to lay out the remains should facilitate further identification, officials said.

But Snyder, whose father is among the largest group of missing service members — those from World War II — worries she may not live long enough to see the day his body is returned to U.S. soil.

To date, the U.S. effort has led to the identification of more than 1,400 individuals. According to one Congressional count, 74,374 remain missing from World War II; 8,055 from Korea; 1,757 from the Vietnam War; 127 from the Cold War; and one from the Gulf War.

"When I go to the family updates (hosted by JPAC), there are so many people waiting and hoping," Snyder said. "The challenge to JPAC is just monumental when you know the numbers."

Talking over the phone about such a loss is a cold and somewhat sterile exchange compared to living it and hoping for recovery, she said.

"These folks have had their whole lives changed in some way by this person who did not come home," Snyder said. Her father, 2nd Lt. Dale Watterson, was a 24-year-old navigator flying out of England when his bomber was hit by German flak and crashed late in the war.

In recent years, the families of Korea and World War II missing have made vocal entreaties for greater recovery efforts as they reach old age, and amateur sleuthing via the Internet has provided tantalizing clues.

DELAY UNACCEPTABLE

For the first time in a decade, and reflecting renewed concern, an oversight hearing was held on July 10 by a House armed services subcommittee on POW/MIA activities, including those of JPAC and the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office.

Charles A. Ray, deputy assistant secretary of defense for POW/MIA affairs, said the mission of accounting for the missing "is the embodiment of this nation's commitment to those it sends into harm's way."

From an original number of more than 2,500 missing from the Vietnam War, 889 have been accounted for and returned, he said.

Ray said he tells families the recovery work "is not 'CSI: Miami.' This is the real world, where JPAC scientists and team members don't have the luxury of writing a script so that the case is solved in less than an hour."

But Ray added that, "Even though we speak proudly of what we've been able to accomplish with your (Congress') help, it's simply not acceptable that many family members have had to wait decades for answers."

ADVANCES IN SCIENCE

Johnie E. Webb Jr., deputy commander of JPAC, said identifications can be made in as short as a month. Dental comparisons, DNA, X-rays, prescription eyeglass examination, wedding rings and watches are among the evidence used to make an identification.

On the other end of the time spectrum, an identification recently was made from remains turned over from Vietnam to the United States in 1988.

Webb said the lab early on wasn't able to extract usable DNA, but advances more recently in science made that possible using a demineralization process and the ability to use less bone for testing.

Testifying at the July 10 subcommittee hearing, Rear Adm. Donna L. Crisp, commander of JPAC, pointed to demineralization as an improvement in the lab, saying that should accelerate the time between recovery and identification, particularly for the smaller bone fragments recovered in Vietnam.

Many recoveries in Vietnam are made at sites where aircraft crashed at high speeds, fragmenting and dispersing remains, officials said. By contrast, World War II bombers that went down in places such as Papua New Guinea often crashed with less violence, and full crews often are recovered.

Crisp also noted that the extra lab space will allow the 208 boxes of Korean War remains to be laid out for analysis.

"So those are the two things that come to mind, innovative things that have happened in the last couple of years to decrease recovery and ID time," she said.

Webb said when the Central Identification Laboratory Hawai'i — which became part of JPAC — opened here in 1976, its only responsibility was the Vietnam War.

"Now we have the responsibility to do the Korean War. We have the responsibility to do World War II. We have a worldwide mission which includes Europe," Webb said. "So the mission has expanded."

Robert Mann, the deputy scientific director at the lab, said staffing has increased, and when he started in 1992, there were about six anthropologists. Now there are more than 20, he said.

LIMITED RESOURCES

Part of the identification problem comes when anthropologists deploy, and their carefully laid-out remains sometimes have to be boxed back up for storage.

Crisp said JPAC does about 70 missions a year. This year, the command has gone to 15 countries, including Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Papua New Guinea, Palau, the Solomon Islands, South Korea, Japan, Pagan Island, Canada, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Germany and France.

Crisp said there have been 46 missions for the Vietnam War, 16 for World War II, and five for Korea. She added that "we're starting to go back to the Republic of China," and planning has begun for the first missions to India.

Hundreds of Americans perished and are missing from World War II flights over the Himalayan "Hump."

Complications remain should JPAC's mission become less Vietnam War-focused, meanwhile.

Webb said the acidic soil in Vietnam and Laos causes remains to deteriorate much more quickly than remains out of Korea.

"So in a very short period of time, there's not going to be anything to recover in Vietnam," he said.

There hasn't been recovery access to North Korea since 2005, and Webb said there's a limited amount of work that can be done in South Korea.

There are JPAC detachments in Thailand, Vietnam and Laos. Snyder, who is part of a group called the World War II MIA Recovery Working Group, would like to see the creation of JPAC "field branches" in the South Pacific and Europe, and a closer working relationship with amateur historians.

Webb said a limiting factor in recovery is that JPAC only can field about 15 teams. Part of the reason for that is war demands and competition for personnel and resources.

Webb also fully realizes what's at stake.

"We know that there are families out there that are waiting," he said. "We know that family members are dying every day. We're pushing ourselves to figure out, how can we do this better? How can we do it faster, and get the answer to families?"

McHugh, the representative from New York, said at the recent hearing that neither the Defense Department nor U.S. Pacific Command "have been fully committed to fully resourcing the accounting effort."