By Lauren Crothers
PHNOM PENH
Remains discovered in Cambodia and sent to a special testing facility in Hawaii have been identified as a United States soldier who went missing in 1967.
On Friday, the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh issued a statement on behalf of the US Department of Defence, announcing the identification of 19-year-old Staff Sergeant James L Van Bendegom, who fought in the Vietnam War.
It said he was buried “with full military honors” on November 11.
The statement said that in 1967, the soldier was assigned to a division that was stationed near the Cambodian border.
“Staff Sgt. Van Bendegom was captured, and returning American prisoners of war (POWs) later reported that he died in Cambodia from wounds sustained during the attack,” it said.
At that time, the U.S.—which was embroiled in a bitter and protracted war with communist forces in Vietnam—was assisting South Vietnamese soldiers who were carrying out incursions in Cambodia, where the ultra-Maoist guerrilla Khmer Rouge found allies in the North Vietnamese troops stationed along its borders.
The U.S. itself carried out a ground incursion in Cambodia in 1970, and went on to provide assistance to the Lon Nol government in Cambodia—which was fighting Khmer Rouge forces—by dropping at least half a million tons of bombs. Overall, the US Department of Defence says that 52 American soldiers are still unaccounted for in Cambodia from that period, with another 1,639 in Vietnam.
In Cambodia, operations have been jointly conducted between the U.S. and Cambodian authorities since 1992 to search for the remains of POWs or those who went missing in action.
A joint mission completed in late March saw the remains of three people, believed to be U.S. soldiers, repatriated in a solemn military ceremony attended by the U.S. Ambassador, William Todd, and other high-ranking government officials.
Those remains were recovered in Kompong Cham province, which borders Vietnam, but Friday’s statement did not say exactly where the newly identified remains had been found.
It said they were handed to US officials by a Vietnamese national in a Thai refugee camp in 1986, but the Joint Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Command, which is based in Oahu, was only able to determine the identity now, “thanks to advances in technology.”
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