i think we'll continue to we'll continue to see the tension between the local, the personalized, particular history, the biography prior to military service, and if to, you know, the aims of the statehood to rewrite or to retell a story of a war that was incredibly contentious and hard even for veterans to this day grapple with, you know, their own experience. long answer promise i'll keep them shortser going from here on in. >> no worries because this ties into, you know, the transformation of the symbol of the tule of the unknown the flag, the flag that is so much more common, and carried, you know, in marathon and parades therefore brings that message to not be forgotten that's wherening one of the themes that i always find difficult is that,

named individuals who were trying not to forget something secret about it that individual. but then those can also get sort of washed into the symbolology and find interesting to think about why america has this much more openly front relationship with it than sort of the commonwealth with the poppy and the tomb that can represent and then lee them where they fell not -- why would you bring that remains home. >> that has been understanding the tradition with social contract between the state as we'll say the military and with the state, and current pastor members, family website american public it took me while to traffic some of the contemporary to learn and understand that tradition went all wait back to to civil war that it changed, it tight pnd gained new force from

world war i to korean war with war during the battle there was the expectation of return. to the vietnam war, so right i think it's -- the necessary for me to dabble and let's be honest. i am -- i can try my after archive research and onwards an i would say michael allen as well from the vietnam war help to me understand the political context that gave rise to i think you know the increased cultural demanding and advances in terms of science that, you know, sub tales to produce this. to forensic enterprise, and to provide, you know, this almost this mystical notion that our science, you know, can triumph here. it can triumph in stretching back to the previous war and it can triumph with this promise that there will be no other unknown i think that is something that is helping unpack or that's what i try to do --

is help pun pack a little bit from sort of not magic but the work of -- transformation that science officer and new ritual that attempt to bridge chasms of prolong grief ambiguity uncertainty of that death. >> yeah. so just to transition there we qukly to the science part there. one of the things that i also find rewarding is the conversation about how the certainty and expertise around identification science also sort of evolved and changes. but to the same time there's still a traditional hall mark you talk about how family will say i recognize over portion of that person's body you must show me the remain. that's how i will recognize them but as that sort of, you know, moves back and you have visual

recognition, dog tag recognition, then you have the amber apology you start thinking about well then you get to a level of expertise only people can recognize fragmentary remains that we're togs about when you bring dna into the picture it gets to another level as well there's -- there's a transition of expertise and sacred moving up in the chain but always want to be able to return it back to but i know this name goes with this. >> yeah so much of what i try to write about in early chapters around the scientific process there's that -- oh, extraordinarily powerful tools are now there at our fingerprints but genetics use -- it can do extraordinary things. but it doesn't -- it hinges upon that rudimentary element of trust and what i mean to say is if family dos not

belove that it has been a scientifically sound process that, these experts have done their job well, and that there aren't man a margin of error that they received this information, and they can say yes. i believe this. i believe this tiny fragment of my brother is my brother. all right or is my father that's something by the way that -- i found to be common with my earlier research -- yeah that that sense of trust and the efficacy of the science they go hand and glove. without trust, you are not going to have families buy in and case doesn't have to go -- remains decimated by genocide. it was necessary for families not just to trust that also participate, partake in the process because they have to give their dna samplings and

that in the early years, as they were trying to build up a system, that could likings house of cards fall apart if you didn't have families providing dna sample and then believing resultses for them. i felt like i was hearing, you know, a different version, of course, different because different context and concerns around verdicts of the combatant but that sensibility of do we have trust, can we trust? and without trust, the science is recognizing that this enterprise may well fail and every positive identification might all of a sudden look that problematic if an identification was salty or someone cast a version about its trust worth thyness so so much more than just the lab but it is the social world arntiond the lab. >> yeah. i always think it is interesting when we then look at the language around accounting which kind of has a financial history.

when you think about the other parts where commerce kind of comes into it. what does it cost to find and recover and identify someone. versus what is it worth you know it means everything to the family but does that mean spend everything to achieve it, and there's this interesting balance of this terminology but also some problematics of thinking about things in terms of the dollar values attached. >> yeah. yeah. sorry. it is d.c. there's a helicopter overhead so i'm not sure if you hear that but apologies for the extra noise. i grot to the lab i did my research on what was then central identification monitory in 2011 and twelve and then i came back a couple of more times but that moment where i think the mission as a whole -- was overgoing fair amount of

scrutiny about its efficiency. that there was this oversight that congress had and was pursuing about how many identifications per year were possible what were they doing at the time? how could that be increased? and you know, understandably there's always how do you make this system better and more efficient? but i was struck by, you know, this language of of efficiency even to the point that there was a -- a consultant brought in, and i'm not telling you anything you don't know. but so in this oversight and in this processes of extra consultant and check, trying to ascertain whether their mission was being accomplished -- had the opportunity to speak with one and i remember her ib

droog using the language of customer. right customer is her family and i thought oh that's such a -- such a mistake. because this entire enterprise operates on a necessary notion of sanctity that the missing are sacred and that the families not families they are the closest thing we have to this and that meaning what mean by that is they're the guardians of the memory, you know, and they're the ones of the missing and they're the ones who have been waiting and waiting and waiting for some new -- all of a sudden to hear them described as customers right in this effort to make the kind of mission more efficient and -- yeah and more responsive to this oversight i thought oh don't go down that path. no i know that -- many in the defense wmi counting agency -- felt the same sort of

frustration with that language it wasn't true with overwhelming majority of people working, you know, for on this mission would ever -- would never -- >> at the same time, there's another side to that where there was scrutiny and oversight for reasons of not maybe a certainty of putting a finger on what was wrong but certainly something was wrong in termses of there wasn't a sense that the sacred matter in that brotd sense that specific sense. and that's really where, you know, i think the language always gets problem matting like the accounting name for our effort causing problems when you go to accounting agency when you look at ledgers no we want to tiewk villagers go to small place dig up a crash site. that's not accounting anywhere else.

but you know, when you talk about the language as well with -- one of the thing i found interesting then you look at the sichghtsed knowledge of the laboratory but we do care very much about this but how can we be more affected and get cases accomplished it can't always be a bureaucracy that deals with that we having to figure out a way to make that change happen. you know, so i think, you know, certainly we should probably open it up to broader questions but i think there's definitely a lot to continue to unpack what it means to be a response to the customer. what it means to be responses to, you know, this participate in the sacred and to the individual that sacrifice themselves. you know what is the appropriate level of participation that we need to be able to show? >> if i can get one more junction position between my

work in bosnia and with u.s. military, i went back after yatd been working u.s. military component i went i go back frequently and i spoke with a friend pathologist who has 70 cases and i remember she was so surprised to hear that if families did not accept an identification, and eve this a chabl to appeal ultimately if that appeal was not successful military would still take care of its own and bury those remains as in bosnia at that time all depended on the family members willingness to accept the validity of an identification. so -- i recall how is that. how is it the case that the families could be -- not overridden but their opinion didn't count it was more about -- you know, ultimately there was no way that an identified set of

remains would ever languish on a mortuary shelf if identification was found there was a need to render proper military right. i think that's junction position always struck me. >> gets at the problem of the term closure, and in what way does it close anything. administrative or is it meaningful? >> yeah. >> so i'm not sure would you do you have some questions -- >> yes. quick preempghtively there. so i will invite our audience to use the raise hand function toe mail questions to rachel wigly if you're on facebook or to use the q and a function and we'll do our best to call on everyone. i would like to start off co-chair prerogative you have a limited amount of time to share the contents of the book with us.

and there are many things from the book that are absolutely fascinating that may or may not be familiar to either historians or to average americans. so as anen anthropologist and not -- if you talk about how you go about doing your research because you not only interviewed people. but as you mentioned a few minutes ago, you traveled to hawaii. you worked at the lab there. and these are absolutely fascinating section in the book, you travel to vietnam with one of these accounting teams. and you spent many weeks firsthand participating in one of these reclamation projects so if you could just talk as a scholar about doing this and various components that allowed you to ultimately tell this story.

>> right. so as a sociocultural anthropology imagine this is hope that you can spend sustained amounts of time with your community or the practice that you want to understand well. or the place that you want to understand well. so in this case, this project was complicated that's why it took me over a decade. because there were so many different sites and there were so many different we'll call them stakeholders people involved in this process. so it could never only be about the science. it could never only be about members of the military veterans or current service members it could never only be about the families. somehow, i needed to try and get feel for perspective involvement understand on all of these different fronts, so e began i kind of thought about the project as one where i was tracing this ark of recover and

commemoration although would could argue because i started tomb of the unknown i started at the foot end but that was more arnght this point of curiosity i followed the expertise and i traced these science first. and what i mean by follow the expertise, in fact, two dna who worked who had actually come from arm forces dna identification laboratory so i was kind of tracing expertise back from bosnia, and both of those individuals had had a hand in the identification of the vietnam unknown soldier. so -- i got in touch with one i was tiebl tour arm forces identification and that was open the door. so it meant this demographic research where i was shadowing scientists day in and day out in laboratory and there's the black

lab she has arrived. and this is what she hope -- so then -- yeah. i would spend, you know, weeks, trying to figure out what is forensic and logical protocol with set of remains. i didn't never spent time in the laboratory so i had done a fair amount in bosnia -- and then gradually you know it was a point of which the head of then, head of the laboratory, laboratory in hawaii said if you're going to understand the forensic scientific process of identification, you need to go on a mission to see what a recovery mission is and that was, you know, without that -- step access this project would have been so different. so right, i accompanied a mission that recovery mission to central vietnam.

it was a sorry it was ab 28-day archaeological dig we base camped which meant you know the structures for a rudimentary campus set up we spent the 28 days each day hiking up to a steep mountain slope, and to find remanes of a site ascertained a pinpointed helicopter crash so that was working with military incredibly fortunate -- teammates and in the end of it we recovered remains and those remains led to the story of meek el ray allen and so that gave me the last portion of my research which was to follow the remains back to the little town that had been the, you know, the locust of law. and the face of this celebrated home coming.

the scope even a bit more because there that little town had suffered three losses. one man was killed came home right away alan was killed and she's remain return 46 years later and then another person is still killed in action and body recovered so in that little town working with a veterans i got a much better sense of what that looked like decades later both, you know, with resolution coming early on and then this protracted and ambiguous law and person will never come home. so yes task was to move across these bases, and to move through different regimes of knowledge different ways of knowing of thinking through and understanding this process from the most scientific to the most intimate localized version and that which i describe in this little town, and of bayfield,

wisconsin. >> thank you. i have a second question to ask for the side -- and you met with people, you had multiple and in-depth conversations, and one certainly gets a sense of the local meanings and the personal meanings of the war. what i did get a clear sense on is the matters that this was the vietnam war. other than this position in time. world war ii the good war fought senate subsidies. this war as you said earlier in your talk was a contentious one. united states government about sacred lied to mernl american people lied to its own

politicianings. lied to the men, women who served in vietnam. and i'm wongd nearing your discussions with the people that you talked to if there was any kind of reflection critical or not critical about this particular war to it meant to them in their historical memory or their thoughts about the government in relationship to the war or was this something sthafs just assumed in the intensely personal that you talk about? >> no, no i think there are mommies where -- moments where you see anger and bitterness around this war and alone this is a celebration of -- of a soldier returned home. so here's some examples. when there's a third person from a little town and this community in northern wisconsin who has

not returned when family put on a 50th of remembrance ceremony like 50 days. to the day is his death, his parents. you know, standing at the back of the room was vietnam vet who talked about how the u.s. government of writes blank checks with everyone person who is enlisted serves and then fed and fairly strong tones but it had cashed those checks with these three men. so there's -- very distinctly krit critique of the government and more subtle ways person who might quote in introducing that community is woman named mary and mary writes poignantly she did not lose someone in the wave and lost her husband in 2015 he died not just of lung cancer but more likely from ptsd she writes she talks

as her husband did and she shared a fair amount of her feelings about -- what that war stole from him or took from him. and yet at the same time, assistance he did not want to be gone he wanted to service -- and very end of the book one of the thing i trees there's a -- person who has that sense of betrayal is one of the two guys from again from milwaukee, wisconsin who built the motorcycle, right that famous mock that's part of vietnam artifact left at the wall. he talked about it was really moving he talked about -- he was with a group of other bikers who would come for memorial day weekend and she got separated from other bikes and end up roam ling around drk and

d.c. can be a really -- disoriented place and he was talking about that feeling of the law leak a nation's capitol that you have a sense of not knowing where he was. and that el tooing of having returned after the war. and never tone enough and that became their project and that is -- you know, is a message to the estate account for the missing. that also recognizes who we are recognize what we gave, and yeah i think there's shades of it. i will also say that it's -- particularly my wisconsin crew, if i'm called that, there's people who don't wear their politics on their sleeve. when they came home, many of they will told me that, you know, those who got in war told

me yeah we were told not to take, you know, to take off our uniform and and the bus back home, you should be in clothing and then ask how do people treat you when you got back well you know they're happy to have me back right. there's a sense in that community that how shall i say that their own community this is my point about particularities of a local their own community, you know, welcomes them home. whether the nation at large welcome them home that might be a sticking point but -- that's the advantage to spendings some time with spaces outside the beltway to get a feel for, you know, how people lev their lives in 50 years and what -- what they are still in their size and which ones have they come to accept, and according to what term? so again long winded answer but i think there but it is subtle because frankly that's subtilty

with which my displayed regularly about this. christian. >> thanks eric. sarah really wonderful book and fascinating presentation thank you. i realize you're, but we're in a historic seminar here so if you could for -- the audience kind of put your book and be vietnam war efforts recovery experts into a broader historical context. take us could just quickly kind of the historical article from the civil war through most recent war experience in terms of the effort to account. the effort to recover. and then secondly, connected with that, where do you see your most important sister graphic

intervention in spoke place lacet into the context as well. would appreciate that. thank you. >> very good. so as i say it took me a while to understand i needed to do bergts and con tech chullize in the vietnam war and that became clear through conversation and through conversations with historians. earlier i read allowed me to see that notion of repatriate doesn't begin with one, but that sense that a whole system was built up around northern body of needing to return, and so it could be the south like that kind of blew my mind i can't been thinking about it in those terms and then -- i will say some of the best work on commemorational war and memory for me and really stages

of this, our project was to read jay winter thomas, they really -- i read, i read and i was very lucky to have him come for a book workshop and to help me shore up, you know, the history call account of the book. so i read and i just finished teaching it with my graduate students in sites of pneumonia sites of warning this is such a seminal book for nobody who works on commemoration and war vet and the mr. mr. politics ano think if i can jump ahead a little bit and say -- he touches on something that res naitd and i knew i knew that's where my work would articulate but come back to that in a moment let's just say world war i you have -- a december nation of bodies unseen unexperienced before so that ten million people die, five million of them are unrecovered do not come back. right so that just this rupture

of this sense of where, where do they belong? what is interesting is for the american, the american family member of the world war i losses, they wanted when given the opportunity to decide do they want their remanes to fall to lie where they spell? their response 70% is no we want them home. and that is a tradition that -- that continues and i would say gains force for world war ii with 65% of families now there's been fantastic work that looks at the unknown buried in military cemetery doing soft diplomacy of rendering visible to europe, what were the sacrifices the u.s. made? you know, on behalf of the world on behalf of europe to stop them right so there are others who have written about that but i focus on that number that the majority of families wanted

remain to come back so repatriation and this is a practice during the war that's the military involved not just waiting for after the treaties to be signed be during the war as battles are raging that remains are to be returned. and then the vietnam war this is already in effect, i think it was helpful to learn from some of my colleagues the -- the not just about the forensic scientific changes, but also the tactical changes the way vietnam would stop -- i iconic helicopters right that the helicopters were about insertion let's merlin ray allen was part of a concept team inserted right but also about extraction the ability to take the wounded and the dead out from the battlefield out from,

you know, from the war and back home. so these are things that it took me a while to appreciate but it wasn't worn off this was building, and there was a cultural sensibility and then there were tactical operational, aspects of how the u.s. fighting its wars then you have a scientific advance of dna testing. so that story it didn't it wasn't immediately aware to me. now if i can circle back to world war i so much of jay winter's writing and tom mcclure they helped me understand, you know, that recovery on battle field is naming that naming of, you know, the grunt, the naming of the lowest on the military hierarchy that body needed to be recovered to be marked. in jay winters words she -- he spends time thinking about

what memorial monuments do as these spaces of bereavement and mourning that helped a community who fabric has been torn to begin to stitch it back together and appeal to one another right, he talks about how monument is inscribing in some central place in the village describe those of the name of who died and also pointing to families who were made, who were made to support. not thought i knew that i needed to study that graphically, and though it is 50 years, 60 years late, that is what i was hoping to get at seeing how families communities, veterans came together around these returns or when there weren't remains to be returned. >> thank you we have handle in the q and in the q and a and questions from e-mail. so first up will be james bannon

your hand is up. if you could unmute yourself, you can ask your question. >> thank you eric thank you professor wagner. i ask this question as a veteran who served in the u.s. army in france a body french, german and american never been found and sensitized to this problem fascinated amateuristly since then and as you were speaking, i formed extraordinary documentary that i saw some oh -- six, five years ago maybe you've seen it too called taking chance. it is the documentary of a journey of the body of a soldier from i guess the air force base to over air force base in delaware. to his hometown in the care and

dignity with which the military, the marines accord that ceremony, and making little journey of this body possible. and so -- i'm interested -- i have a cousin who lost his life also in the second world war his death certificate bury at arlington but read head not found. which means that part of him remains in someplace in italy. how do you set and we've spoken already about the say screedness of so much of this. how do you set the search for military men and women missings in action in larger context in way we honor those lost in war --

as privilege of greatly wealthy society but also of a nation fighting a war in vietnam that was much less costly in american lives. than those other great wars -- and can you imagine treating all of the dead that were lost in the first and second world war the way we treat individuals now coming in home from afghanistan through dover air force base with a care with which we treat the search for the missing in action in vietnam? mr. banner thank you so much for your comments and you touch on a number of very important themes. i'll do my best and not sure that i can respond to all of them. but let me start with -- where you began which is this -- kevin bacon stars in it i could be wrong. i remembered speaking with the

son of air force pilot who lost a father when he was six and a half. and one of the things that he describes is you know, the extraordinary surprise he felt when he learn remains were discovered and never imagine someone was still searching for his father remains but he was not one of the families his family was not one of the -- many families with who are very politically mobilized and so when he got that call totally out of the blue. and so you know, we spoke we spoab on couple of different occasions, and i knew he asked me if i had ever seen this film, and the reason why he wanted to say he wanted to stress that he felt like it captured so much of that

attentiveness to ritual and that not performance in influence your way but -- a performance of respect that especially the military escort has in bringing literally bringing those remains back to a family. so i want to acknowledge that that film is a good portrait, and resonated at least with one family member who i think is very attentive to -- as a process is one which is incredibly costly and feeling family to be extremely prnghts for getting regular mains that his father has been returned. yeah there's aside from the ritual care i think there is a flipside to the car that i explore in the book and that's

about expectations. we have come to think of forensic science as all powerful that it happens, like you know dna especially right that 24 hours you have the results. absolutely certain, and that you know that the science will this is what i mean when i write that it's sort of responds to the defeat. but the problem and you know then witness this firsthand the problem is that you know families now assume that that's what necessarily must happen and can happen and will happen. but if there are no remains recovered, or those remains recovered yet there isn't because i know you know that countless examples of this now not countless but several examples where remains still are not going to yield maybe not enough to yield a dna sample

maybe the remains are so -- degraded because of the conditions in this they were located or has been buried there will be no definitive dna profile to match up and so -- there's a sense that, you know, this science can do it all. and what is doesn't deliver that extremely frustrating and so you -- reference, you know, world war ii losses, one of the things that i'm always a little bit surprised by and chris you may want to weigh in here because i find it so fascinating that, it's -- i'm surprised by the world war ii families that have, that have essentially sued state right they've gone to court. to insist that defense department do a better job right to take they believe they know -- that scattered remains are buried on national cemetery those unknowns are definitely

more relative than theirs no surprise that it is usually a couple of generations -- and there's a sense that, you know, that case should jump the cue, and it should be, you know, that case should be resolved immediately. and i sometimes think about again what i've learned and noim i'm not a historian feel free to correct me. so i have the impression that around world war ii losses or particularly for family it was a kind of -- it was not something they brought it home, and they put it away. right and they -- didn't have that same sensibility so yeah we were in a different era we live in a society but we also live in one now where they're outside expectations about what this process can achieve. and some of this has to do with our -- you know, not understanding nuances of the science itself. so chris i wonder i can see you kind of -- that you may have something to

add. >> yeah it definitely gets to the messiness of the actual work and the messiness of war in and of itself. because on one hand, i think there is a common narrative about that stoicism and we'll put it away and we'll endure. but then there's also the -- constant worry point of that puzzle that hasn't been solved that piece that never has been found that piece is still missing. what happened to that? and can i care in a way about that that helps me worry and solve something? and certainly, you see that in, you know, from the perspective of any individual case. that's what matters. when you talk about there being a cue of cases, that's impossible to understand. how can one mean more than another how can you judge which one to work on today? which one to work on next week? aren't all of them of equal weight? and when they are equal weight

how do you constantly make progress and show you care in that broad, broadway. to show that you are helping to advance so many. you know, when you talk about the families that want to push their own case where they think there's a clue or something they can lead them there there's still also -- there's a world war ii unknown. >> right. right is that someone? is that your loved one? you know, is that where ultimate clues will end up we don't know for sure and we also know mistakes were made you talk about you know only as good as our most recent mistake. there's also that challenge. you know for world war ii we recover and identified 280,000 people after world war ii, using 9 science and technology that was available and to the 1960s. and what you're really talking about if you make one percent of error then that's a quarter of all of the unknowns are in the stakes that we have to try to sort through.

so that both kind of highlights where we have to have an ethos of care that acknowledges that zone of problem. and ethos that still tries to push ahead with what we can do what we can prove and have starngdz of proof that withstand that level of scrutiny. >> thank you we have a hand up with john martin unmute yourself you can ask your question. >> we see that you are still muted. there we are. >> thank you. >> this sounds like a remarkable book yeent to take a lot of time on my question because it is selfishly interested and my brother and myself is -- common or rare. both served in the vietnam war my brother serve d in company clerk in marines and air

squadron and ambushed one night controlled -- private. and a star for his bravery. i was drafted in the 60s about ten years before him. and i was assigned to germany but pure chance, we manage again to met in 19909s and went to vietnam wall and members oh, my god, he was still alive when i put him on the chopper. and i wonder if that's a common experience. and other question is, ten years later, danny wrote screght his memoir in vietnam war in pentagon papers. and i was serving as journalist in washington at the too many i got it -- and then when i started teaching at columbia i was -- i was just overwhelmed by what

he was saying what he was doing and i sent a copy to my brother. in california, his wife erupted in anger and sent it back and told me that i had no business doing that. and we still don't talk about this. all of these year later. this common? >> well, before there's a lot there. let me start with the wall and let me say as i look at some of the attendees and special and perhaps i can invite her to say a word or two. but this is pam cain by the way. so as you described that moment of encounter finding a name and that tragic realization that the person you know one thought to be saved, in fact, died. i referenced a woman from this

little town in northern wisconsin married -- and married husband had a very similar experience. and it was the experience of knowing that his best friend or presuming we should say best friend has been killed in the air stliek he himself had had to call. and extraordinary guilt that he lived with, and, in fact, you know, mary took while to really understand this. but it i think it was more of the case that her husband had assumed he had died when this best friend has nflt survived and the sadness that realization that these two men after the war had never learned one another's state right and for this is maybe done with what i find -- confusing.

but a little very i'll call it con founding. and that perhaps as naivete but there was a sense of putting world behind them. and of not knowing how or not -- not having, you know, that feeling that right course of action to be to reach out it try to figure out did my buddy live. and then as you described to learn that, and as a name listed on a beautiful but abstract and powerful memorial but one that is so jarring right in the number of names and way in which you yourself reflected in the shooting of that etch stone. so i say all of this to your

story doesn't surprise me. that it in a way it saddens me because i think it was true. i don't know for how many people. but this war was not won that people came home and reached otoone another and -- i hear from the veterans i work with veterans years later. right years of later when they found their way to the post or even know retirees they have more time they have more i don't know -- emotional spaces to kind of think through the memories and reconnect with people. but again, i'm not sure that i -- i wouldn't say that i've been or done in-depth without experience per se. so -- i'll leave it there and wonder pam if you might -- wish to either now or in the minutes to talk a little bit about your experience of what the wall has meant to you as a

space of encountering and honor your father i'll put that out there and understand if you wish to not -- >> and wish to raise land function i'll call on you until then we have a question from the q and a function from larry burr man who asks can you discuss the efforts on finding missing from the vietnamese side? >> yeah. wonderful question. so i have had the good fortune in the last two years on to begin to pair up with a vietnamese scholar dutch scholar at the university of amsterdam and like a fine foundation for the dutch and he has embarked on a multiyear and incited study as against archive research into the vietnamese experience and particularly its efforts thafn ramped up in recent years to recover and identify its 300,000

missing in action. so we talk regularly she has a -- hope that we'll be able to work together a little bit shed legit on the american experience as with the vietnamese experience. but it has been really fascinating for her she began her research looking at the vietnamese government. you know it was slow to not embrace but slow to say we will build up the laboratory capacities the genetic capacities to seek to identify all 300,000. and now that it has, it's a combination of local resources but also partnerships with national biotech firm and scholar tom has been a

fantastic, she weighed in on my research at early points helping me understand things that i think were necessary to -- augment or provide nuance my understanding that the vietnamese understanding so -- it is, it is a -- it is a process that is just recently underway in earnest what i mean by that certainly there have been recoveries and the right ritual for the vietnamese missing not the south vietnamese. but there now is this new era of dna led identification and they partnered with another organization that was central to the work. so it should be a fascinating story to watch unfold and i personally have -- right now is just advantage from a far.

>> thank you we have a question from a historian at carnegie milan who is working on korean war pow, and mia issues, and has a number of questions but i'll ask for the moment one in particular. they write, i read your article about k208 i'm not sure about vietnam my personal thinking about north korea, is that some north koreans want to make identification difficult. in order to demonstrate their hatred of americans could you describe forensic science has intervened in p.o.w.m.i.a. diplomacy? >> that is a fascinating question. and not one i've done a top of research on it unless con con th contextual and chris and 91 and 4 there were 208 boxes

essentially and presumption was 208 individuals. in fact those comingling so that, you know, one -- one set of one remain coming from one box may contain multiple individuals so this has been an enormous puzzle for the forensic anthropologist and the forensic have had to rely very heavily on genetics and dna testing. it's been slow going. but there's been a significant amount of progress there as well and so the cases are garage yulely yielded i don't know what -- i want to say what is it about -- 150 at a again if you know this, the last time i checked it was around 100 and some i don't know how much ideas have come out of this. about 200 now.

>> okay. but we want to say that there are approximately 600 vegs presumed to be part of the k-8 cases. and more recently those of you who may remember trump in the singapore summit 55 boxes again for sets of remains returned. those two are significantly coming it mingled as identifications have been for some extent they've yielded identifications but two will be slow going. in the larger question is this -- you know on the part of north korean an amendment to stymied identification and very hard to tell right and i would not venture -- i know that there are some -- there are cases where recovery is done in late 1990s, 2000s there's indications that site of recovery may have been on not

the most genuine sites meaning what in halt sod remains may have been placed inside and then u.s. teams direct and excavation took place and you can tell these were not the social elements recovered -- there. but presumably name and place there. but all this to say this is not straightforward but i think we would be premature to ascribe and at the end of the day this is about u.s. and u.s. military about southeast asia dropping its military personal on you know the slowest of southeast asian countries that you know are still dealing with the bombing and chemical warfare and so on and so poverty one can imagine this is not the

straightforward and these are parts of larger geo political negotiations that said i don't know enough to ascribe mall intense to each and every case and chris weigh in if you know -- >> certainly we have an example from different collections. and different opportunities we've had to work with north korea to know that, we have gone to sites that appear to have been prepared. we have found remains in the early 1990s turnovers also at sites they've taken us to. and from the remains that were turned over in singapore after following singapore summit. some of those remains have been combinations of we found sites from site recovery site and early 2000s and some remains in this box. but whether there's mall intengt i think it isless that then there's a -- u.s. mission does not seem very

straightforward to these other cultures and other societies. it seem like have concerned about a drop in the bucket compared to the very large number of people who they know were killed in their country. [laughter] and being so concerned that you hold up political progress or all of the other military talks until you satisfy this one -- element is very hard to translate and very hard to understand. but that's also where humanitarian mission is embedded in larger geopolitical challenges and something we've had to work very hard -- you know normalizing relationship with vietnam withheld contingent among them providing all of this information. so the incentive was never how do i get all of these things done? how i solve mysteries i can't possibly solve i don't know what happens says the negotiator on vietnamese side. i don't know and i don't know how i can answer that question. adequately -- but i can try to work with you

to comp with some solutions, but again when you make everything con ting jengt upon that it is very difficult to push out geopolitical interest. >> thank you it's past 5:30 i think we can go on for much longer but i'm afraid i have to draw this to a close thank sarah and chris turn it over to christian to wrap us up. christian. >> thanks eric. let me remind our viewers that we hope to see you again at our next session this wednesday. december 2nd we'll discuss columbia university story and about new book that perfect fascist a story of love, power, and morality in italy. thanks to sarah, chris and eric for just really terrific conversation. thanks to all of you to our audience, for watching and

participating we're adjourned stay safe and -- be well. take care. >> booktv is television for serious readers all weekend, every weekend join us again next saturday 8 a.m. eastern for best in nonfiction books. [silence] ment that he will not run for reelection. >> hello and welcome to the city club of cleveland w >> hello and welcome to the city club of cleveland where we we devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy

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