The Duty to Repatriate U.S. Military Personnel

ABSTRACT

Tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel remain missing in action (MIA). U.S. law requires that our MIAs be accounted for and that the government maintain a comprehensive, coordinated, integrated and fully resourced program dedicated to accomplishing this enormous task. The aim of this paper is to show that there is also a moral requirement. There is a moral duty to repatriate U.S. military personnel, a duty that is grounded in our individual right to self-defense.

KEYWORDS:

• Repatriate
• repatriation
• POW/MIA
• right
• duty

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the anonymous peer reviewers for their kind words and for the helpful suggestions that have been incorporated into the final version of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 “Missing person” is defined as

(A) a member of the armed forces on active duty who is in a missing status; or (B) a civilian employee of the Department of Defense or an employee of a contractor of the Department of Defense, who serves in direct support of, or accompanies, the armed forces in the field under orders and who is in a missing status. (United States Code, Title 10, 1509, subsec. (1))

“Missing status” is

the status of a missing person who is determined to be absent in a category of any of the following: (A) Missing. (B) Missing in action. (C) Interned in a foreign country. (D) Captured. (E) Beleaguered. (F) Besieged. (G) Detained in a foreign country against that person’s will. (United States Code, Title 10, 1513, subsec. (2))

2 “Once COVID-19 restrictions are eased, the greatest obstacles to increased Vietnam War accounting are too few qualified intelligence analysts and unreliable funding for operations … ” (National League of POW/MIA Families 2020).

3 United States Code, Title 10, 1513's definition of “accounted for” implies, but does not explicitly state, repatriation of the remains of deceased MIAs; to wit:

(A) the person is returned to United States control alive; (B) the remains of the person are recovered to the extent practicable and, if not identifiable through visual means as those of the missing person, are identified as those of the missing person by a practitioner of an appropriate forensic science; or (C) credible evidence exists to support another determination of the person’s status. (subsect. (3))

4 There was an explicit promise of repatriation made by a government official during WWI.

[I]n early September 1918 … Secretary of War Newton D. Baker publicly pledged to the nation that the government would ensure a home burial to all who died in its foreign service. This promise, made in lieu of a clear policy concerning the deceased, was announced in the newspapers that autumn.

Baker’s promise “triggered a massive and highly controversial repatriation of war dead from the battlefields in Europe to the United States between 1919 and 1922.” According to Budreau, undertaking this “colossal task … set an enduring national precedent for generations” (Budreau 2010, 20–21). For an explanation of the roots of the War Department’s promise, see Budreau (2010, 25–26).

5 For a fuller discussion of statutes of limitations, see Roberts (2003; 2007).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rodney C. Roberts

Rodney C. Roberts is a U.S. Navy veteran and an associate professor of philosophy at East Carolina University. He is the editor of Injustice and Rectification (Peter Lang, 2002).