The Pentagon agency that recovers missing American war dead said it plans to more than double this fiscal year the number of identifications it made last year — possibly fulfilling for the first time a mandate previously set by Congress.

Army Brig. Gen. Mark Spindler, the new Hawaii-based deputy director of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, predicted the agency would make 200 or more identifications. For fiscal 2015, which ended Sept. 30, DPAA made 80 IDs.

“No doubt it’s going to be a challenge,” Spindler said in an interview. “But I think with different leadership, different urgency and different focus, we think we can get there.”

Increasingly, the total will be made through disinterments from the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl, adding significantly to the numbers of recoveries from field operations abroad.

Also increasingly, those recoveries will be from World War II, even though the Vietnam War in fiscal 2015 received the lion’s share of DPAA’s $45.1 million field operations budget: 72.5 percent, or $32.7 million, according to the agency.

Those Southeast Asia efforts yielded just nine possible remains. Recoveries from World War II in the Pacific and Europe — at a cost of about $10 million — brought in 19 remains.

That compares with $180,385 spent in fiscal 2015 for disinterments, including the exhumation of 13 Korean War and 33 World War II graves from Punchbowl.

The overall DPAA budget for 2015 was $130.6 million.

Asia a focus for now

Spindler acknowledged DPAA needed to increase the number of remains coming into the Hawaii lab, which he said has the capability of identifying 200 or more service members annually.

According to DPAA, 73,515 Americans remain missing from World War II, 7,830 from the Korean War, 1,624 from the Vietnam War, 126 from the Cold War and six from Iraq and other conflicts. Of the approximately 83,000 missing, 75 percent of the losses are in the Asia-Pacific region.

Spindler, who became deputy director in September, said DPAA will continue focusing on Southeast Asia field operations for the near term, although it is under review. Some groups that represent families of the fallen, however, would like to see a more equitable distribution of the effort, which has historically centered on Vietnam.

DPAA said it has about 500 people in Hawaii at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, about 120 in Washington, D.C., and detachments of between 10 to 15 personnel each in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. A fourth detachment is in Europe.

Spindler said there is an urgency in continuing the Southeast Asia field recoveries “because those remains are decaying, and they are decaying quickly because of the acidic soil.”

Equally problematic is the increasing loss of eyewitnesses to some of those casualties, he said. With a concentrated effort over the years, the remaining digs in Southeast Asia are getting harder and more expensive, he said.

“Now you are talking about the ones embedded in the side of the mountains. So this is a higher cost,” Spindler said.

Spindler said as part of a long-term campaign, “we know that we are going to shift, probably, in our main focus, out of Southeast Asia and into the Pacific and World War II into Europe.”

A “campaign plan” for the way forward is being developed by retired Lt. Gen. Michael Linnington, who was named the Washington D.C.-based director of DPAA in June.

“But right now we’re focusing (on Southeast Asia) in the near term, even though the cost is high,” Spindler said, adding, “We’ll never say it’s too expensive to try and attempt to get your loved one.”

Lisa Phillips, president of World War II Families for the Return of the Missing, said she knows some areas are more costly than others for recoveries.

“Should more monies be spent on WWII recoveries — absolutely,” Phillips said in an email.

Her uncle 2nd Lt. Joseph C. Rich died at the hands of the Japanese as a prisoner of war and remains missing.

Phillips suggested money be more “wisely spent” on known remains locations on what’s known as the “master excavation list,” “equally divided across all conflicts.”

“It has always been a struggle of one war against another and that is not fair to any family of a missing soldier, whether it be Vietnam, Korea, or WWII,” she said. “There are many locations of known WWII losses in the queue that sit and wait. I can’t speak to whether the Vietnam monies are being spent on known documented/researched locations.”

‘Unknowns’ and MIAs

Congress mandated in 2009 that the Pentagon have the capacity to identify up to 200 MIAs a year by fiscal 2015 — something it so far has failed to do.

Even though the bulk of DPAA’s field operations budget was devoted to Southeast Asia in 2015, identifications from Korea and World War II eclipsed the Vietnam War tally.

A total of 39 IDs for the year were made from past Korea turnovers and Punchbowl disinterments, 27 from World War II and 14 from Southeast Asia.

Disinterments will provide a big boost in identified remains.

DPAA earlier this month recovered for identification the last of 388 sailors and Marines killed on the battleship USS Oklahoma and buried as “unknowns” at Punchbowl.

Hundreds of other World War II and Korean War unknowns are expected to be dug up from Punchbowl for return to families. DPAA is researching more than 3,000 World War II Americans buried at a cemetery in Manila.

Phillips said many of the families she represents have loved ones buried in Punchbowl, and “these families want their loved ones IDed and returned.” The flip side of the coin is that “we also can not and should not give up searching for MIA and just ID the unknowns.”

“There needs to be a balance of unknowns and overseas recoveries,” she said. “We can not give up on overseas recoveries just to get the mandated figures from Congress through the unknown IDs.”

Family desire is often strong to see the return of a loved one from war — even those buried as unknowns on American soil.

There may be some “who have a sense that they should stay where they are,” said Mary Ann Reitano, a spokeswoman for the National Alliance of Families for the Return of America’s Missing Servicemen.

However, “it is our understanding that the overwhelming majority of family members with loved ones in the Punchbowl want to see their loved ones returned to them.”

Additionally, DPAA is working on formalizing “strategic partnerships” with the public and private sectors to improve the recovery of remains.

Although such a contract hasn’t been signed with the group, Florida-based History Flight Inc. announced in June that it had discovered a long-lost burial trench on Betio Island on Tarawa Atoll that was the hasty grave site of at least three dozen Marines killed in fighting Nov. 20-23, 1943, officials said.

Among the remains delivered to DPAA in Hawaii were those of Medal of Honor recipient 1st Lt. Alexander Bonnyman Jr., who was initially identified while he was still in the sandy soil by his unique patchwork of gold fillings and crowns.