President Donald Trump arrived at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam on Tuesday afternoon aboard Air Force One, and although no one disembarked to greet base residents, the summit with North Korea — if implemented — will have its own impact on Hawaii.
The Air Force called the stop a “gas and go” on the way back to the White House.
In addition to North Korea committing “to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” both countries vowed to recover POW/MIA remains — including the “immediate repatriation” of those already identified by the North.
Those remains likely would come to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPPA) identification lab at Hickam. The agency searches for,
recovers and identifies American service members missing from past wars.
At a press conference in Singapore, the president said he had “countless calls and letters” asking about the return of Americans missing in North Korea from the 1950-53 war.
“They want the remains of their fathers and mothers and all of the people that got caught into that really brutal war,” he said.
Trump said he asked for the return of the missing Americans, “and we got it. That was a very last minute. The remains will be coming back. They’re going to start that process immediately.”
How that will be worked out remains to be seen. DPAA said 7,702 service members are unaccounted for from the war.
The forerunner of DPAA, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, conducted 33 field recoveries in North Korea from 1996 through 2005, when the missions were suspended.
In April and May 2005, the United States feared that North Korea was planning another nuclear test. Amid safety concerns, the Hawaii team members were pulled out.
The agency said at the time it had brought back the remains of at least 30 service members. Cpl. David T. Nordin Jr., a Schofield Barracks soldier with the 3rd Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment, who died in 1951 in North Korea, was among that group.
DPAA could not be immediately reached for comment Tuesday about the president’s recovery goals.
U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, D-Hawaii, said in a statement there is no doubt the summit was a “historic moment in the relationship between the countries and the region.”
She noted the two leaders agreed to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, with the North pledging to work on denuclearization.
“For Hawaii, this should assuage fears of a possible nuclear attack from North Korea,” she said. “My belief has always been that our greatest adversary remains Russia.”
In the meantime the Defense Department is proceeding with a more than $750 million high-powered radar on Oahu to better track missiles from countries such as North Korea and Iran.
Fellow Hawaii Democrat and U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard said, “We must ensure that in the wake of this historic summit, the diplomatic path continues to achieve complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization of North Korea. This is not about blind trust.”
Trump also said he wants to stop war games with South Korea — which some Hawaii-based troops and ships participate in — to save a “tremendous amount of money” and reduce provocations aimed at North
Korea.
Last summer’s Ulchi Freedom Guardian, a computer-simulated defensive exercise, involved 17,500 U.S. service members, with about 3,000 not stationed in South Korea.
Trump also was critical of flying bombers 6-1/2 hours from Guam to South Korea. “That’s a long time for those big massive planes to be flying to South Korea to practice and then drop bombs all over the place and then go back to Guam,” he said, adding that too is expensive.
Those bombers often fly through Hawaii. On June 1, a “minor” in-flight emergency caused a B-1 bomber to return to Hickam. Air Force Global Strike Command said it would not release details, but said “per safety checklists, the aircrew determined to return to Hickam AFB and successfully landed the aircraft.”
Trump said that at some point he’d like to bring home the 32,000 U.S. soldiers in South Korea.
