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May/June 2016 BY GRANT COATES While in Ho Chi Minh City last year, the Veterans Initiative met with Dr. Tran Van Ban. He was familiar with VVA’s VI program and wanted to exchange information regarding those missing in action from the war.
Dr. Ban brought to the meeting five worn composition notebooks, similar to those owned by schoolboys. Each was filled with his notes, diagrams, and hand-drawn maps. This was his personal library of the locations of bodies that he had buried andin many casesrecovered. He asked the VI team to help him obtain archival information that might further the identification and retrieval of war casualties. For more than two hours, Ban and the VVA team reviewed the master list of VI case files, comparing them with his journals. Dr. Ban was particularly interested in cases located in areas where he had buried war dead, and information was exchanged.
Of the 653 soldiers who traveled with him from the North to the South, Dr. Ban is one of fewer than fifty to survive the war. He has worked with U.S. recovery teams in past missions, helping locate American MIAs. In a PBS documentary, Dr. Ban said: “I’m sad that the number I’ve found is so small compared to the number of mothers and fathers dreaming of finding their children.”
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