CLUES AND TRACES

    In the office of Sino-U.S. cooperation at the PLA Archives Department, hundreds of archives cases are piled up beside desks of senior archivists who are reviewing faded handwritten and printed documents.

    Senior archivist Tu Xiqing says, "The manual work of searching for the clues could never be done by a computer."

    Many of the 1.5 million archives relating to the PVA and the PLA headquarters during the Korean War are difficult to decipher.

    "Many archives recorded by grassroots units at that time can't be read at all. Writers of the military reports used traditional Chinese characters, variant Chinese characters, misspelled words, and even symbols to represent words they could not write," Tu says.

    "It usually takes more than a day to review each item and you may not find any relevant information for several days.

    "One likely clue might lead to many other clues, some useful and some totally useless."

    Senior Colonel Li Gang, deputy director general of the PLA Archives Department, says, "Only experts who know the history of the Korean War and the PVA quite well and are familiar with international relations of the period can find clues and traces of foreign military information."

    Even the PVA had difficulty keeping track of missing soldiers in the war, because military units were constantly reorganized after major battles.

    In 2007, Robin Piacine, then president of the Coalition of Families of Korean and Cold War POW/MIAs, wrote to PLA Archives Department former director general Senior Colonel Liu Ying to ask for assistance in helping families find missing personnel.

    The coalition is in contact with more than 2,000 family members and the number of its members is rising as more families become aware of the search efforts.

    "Each time a soldier's remains are returned to a loved one it helps the family members to begin the closure process. We believe that the work that takes place searching and returning our lost love ones is both a noble effort, as well as a humanitarian one......We highly value the cooperation from your government and its work and see it as a source of hope and promise," said Piacine in the letter.

    BRINGING HOPE

    Senior archivist Liu Yiquan, 59, who has worked with the PLA archives for almost 40 years, says, "Anyone would feel anxious if they lost something in his wallet, let alone losing family."

    Under a memorandum signed by Chinese and the U.S. governments in Shanghai February. 2008, China promised to review millions of PLA archives and inform the U.S. Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) every six months about the progress.

    Liu, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer in September 2008, shortly after the memorandum was signed, had reviewed about 50,000 of 60,000 items that were assigned to him, understanding a large amount of information relating to the history and possible information on missing personnel.

    Liu continued reviewing more than 5,000 archives, while undergoing radiotherapy and chemotherapy. The remaining 9,000 pieces became his unfinished goal.

    "My time is not much, but the archives concern the overall situation of military exchanges between the two countries," Liu says, "I have not finished my work."

    During a visit to the PLA Archives Department this year, Rear Admiral Donna Crisp, Commander of Joint Prisoners of War/Missing in Action Accounting Command of the U.S. Pacific Command, honored Liu for his devotion to the humanitarian issue.

    President of the Coalition of Families of Korean and Cold War POW/MIAs Richard Downes told Xinhua by e-mail, "We honor the missing men from the People's Republic of China and their families, as well."

    "Cooperation between our nations is vital, and we are happy that progress is being made," he said.