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By 2014 the Hawaii-based unit in charge of recovering and identifying remains of Americans listed as missing in action from the nation’s wars will be working in a new facility that will increase efficiency and productivity, a military official said Tuesday.
"Right now we are in a spread-out facility … and it’s inefficient to work through that system," said Army Maj. Gen. Stephen D. Tom, commander of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, or JPAC.
JPAC’s primary lab is in Building 45 at Hickam. The unit also uses eight trailers around Building 45 to make up for a shortage of space, and has a secondary forensic science teaching lab at Pearl Harbor.
"We’ve outgrown the existing laboratory at Building 45, which is about 30 years old," Tom said.
A groundbreaking ceremony was held at a site on Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam near the Kuntz Gate. The new facility will put all of JPAC’s laboratories under one roof, Tom said.
"Today we’re going to put up something worthy of our young men and women," said U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, who participated in the ceremony.
The $62.7 million project calls for a three-story, 136,497-square-foot building. Construction is scheduled to be finished by July 2013. The unit would probably move in the following year after installation of equipment, Tom said.
"I support this because this is part of the moral code of the United States. … We will not leave anyone in the field, it’s our pledge to each other," Inouye said.
JPAC has identified the remains of more than 560 American service members since it was established in 2003, its website says.
Smith Group Inc. of Arizona has been hired as the project architect and engineer. The construction contractor is Nan Inc. of Honolulu.
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