National Pow/Mia Recognition Day

Floor Speech

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Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, I call attention to National POW/MIA Recognition Day through Senate statements, such as this, each year to try to help keep national focus on the return of American servicemembers and help their families to know that our country stands with them as work continues to find the answers they more than deserve.

As we observe this National POW/MIA Day on September 20, 2019, a special tribute must be paid to the families and friends of missing servicemembers. Too often, their quiet, ceaseless, and enormous service to our Nation is overlooked. Many have carried on through years and even decades of sorrow and uncertainty. Their questions must be replaced with answers. Their loss must be softened, if possible, by resolution.

Those working hard through challenging conditions to get needed answers and bring all American servicemembers home also deserve appreciation and steady encouragement. Thank you to those who work for and assist the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and related efforts. So far this month, the agency has reported accounting for more than 20 missing servicemembers, many of whom were lost in the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Korean war. Piecing together the circumstances, whereabouts and lives of those lost cannot be easy, but bringing them home is critical to honoring their service. To help with this effort, I have continually fought for the Bring Our Heroes Home Act that is meant to address obstacles preventing families and caseworkers from accessing the records needed for recovery efforts by putting one entity in charge of prioritizing and facilitating the declassification of records related to missing servicemembers.

Thank you to the members of the POW*MIA Awareness Rally Corp. of Pocatello, ID, and other similar groups that hold rallies and other events to keep a spotlight on the immense service of our Nation's veterans and the need for an ongoing focus on bringing them all home. Bringing all of the 82,000 Americans the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency reports remain missing home will certainly not fill the losses felt in far too many American families, but those who have served our Nation deserve no less than to rest at home, and we cannot rest until they do.

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