DPAA is responsible for the fullest possible accounting of over 81,000 unaccounted-for personnel, each of them a service member who gave their life for their country. While the sheer number of missing U.S. personnel from past conflicts is sobering, the DPAA is accountable to all of our missing, to their families, and to the nation, for timely and accurate case progression. To address the scale of our mission, the DPAA and its predecessors have utilized project-based approaches that systematically and thoroughly work to locate and identify our missing, by approaching them as bounded groups delimited by geography, time, and/or military operation. This paper will discuss the inception and development of project-based approaches at DPAA, provide historical and archaeological examples, and explore how this methodology continues to evolve.

DPAA’s Partnerships and Innovation Directorate was created in 2015 in order to help the Agency leverage the expertise, assets, and capabilities of a global partner network in its effort to account for missing US servicemembers. Partners serve as a force multiplier and continue to be a critical asset to the Agency. DPAA and its many partner organizations conduct terrestrial and underwater investigations, excavations, and recovery operations to recover the remains of missing personnel throughout the world. These areas of investigation and/or excavation often represent complex battlefield landscapes and most importantly to our Agency, the last known location of missing servicemembers. Collaborating closely with other DPAA Directorates and stakeholders, PI identifies and engages capable and dedicated partners aligned with DPAA's mission requirements. This paper will highlight the opportunities and challenges of working within the DPAA partner paradigm.

During World War II, an estimated 27,000 American service members went missing from water contexts in the Pacific theater, from ship sinkings and aircraft losses. Immediately after the war, these were only rarely pursued due to technological limitations. Today, the pursuit of underwater losses is one of the fastest growing areas of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA). This paper will explore the accounting efforts from 1945 to 2024 to resolve these underwater casualties, through the lenses of case development, projects and partnerships, and field operations.

81,000 Americans are still missing-in-action, and about 41,000 of them were lost at sea. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency’s (DPAA) mission is to search, recover and identify remains of missing personnel from World War II to recent conflicts. DPAA developed a multi-year, multi-objective underwater innovation study aimed at testing and evaluating emerging technologies, techniques and procedures for underwater losses. This unique cooperative project involves the participation of several universities and research institutes across the globe with a combination of cross-disciplinary expertise and skillsets. DPAA and supporting partners worked on the three interrelated innovation tasks implemented in several testbed locations across Europe and the Pacific Region. This paper presents the preliminary results of this study that tested evolving technologies such as machine learning, deep water robotics and in-field bioinformatic. Challenges and limitations, efficacy and opportunities will be discussed along with the applications of these technologies and their potential to fulfill DPAA's mission objectives.

One of the darkest, and less known tragedies in American history is the 15 December 1944 attack and sinking of Oryoku Maru. The Japanese passenger liner, turned military auxiliary transport ship, was used during the Japanese evacuation of the Philippines in World War II to relocate 1,619 U.S. and Allied Prisoners-of-War (POWs). The POWs, who had previously endured a debilitating existence in prison camps, were transported in the overcrowded holds of the ship with the intended destination of forced labor in mainland Japan. The circumstances of the loss and entombing of approximately 286 of our fallen has been further complicated by post-depositional, anthropogenic events, to include demolition and destructive salvage, resulting in a unique set of challenges presented to the DPAA mission. This presentation will discuss the initial underwater investigation of Oryoku Maru and the specific challenges that DPAA will face during future operations at the site.

DPAA projects often encounter challenges unique to the intersection of archaeology and the accounting mission. Given the breadth and scope of the accounting mission, the effort to locate and recover missing US servicemembers from past conflicts takes DPAA partners all over the globe. But in the Pacific Theater of World War II, where the highest concentration of servicemembers remain missing, the effort is amplified. Remote locations, island cultures, tribal politics, and unpredictable economic factors can impact the development, planning, and execution of partner missions. This discussion will highlight three projects on three different islands that were essential to the war effort and include examples of risk and resiliency within the DPAA partner network.

In 2023, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), with the support of the U.S. Navy's Supervisor of Salvage and Diving (SUPSALV) and working in conjunction with the Navy Experimental Diving Unit (NEDU), embarked on the underwater excavation of a WWII U.S. heavy bomber wreck site in the Bismarck Sea, in Madang Province, Independent State of Papua New Guinea, using saturation diving capabilities. This activity was conducted in coordination with the National Museum and Art Gallery of Papua New Guinea (NMAG) and the PNG Defence Force (PNGDF). This mission was the culmination of multiple years of planning efforts (following the site's discovery by DPAA Partner organization Project Recover), and its undertaking presented a number of unique challenges. This presentation will provide an overview of the activity, discuss some of the challenges (and successes), and explore particularly notable aspects of the operation. It will also examine the potential for future such applications.

The U.S. military commenced Operations Watchtower and Toenails with little planning for battlefield burials. In the Solomon Islands, the Allied forces established ad hoc cemeteries on several islands and developed rudimentary plans for dealing with the hundreds of service members killed in action. As a result of these hasty burials, numerous individuals reportedly buried in these cemeteries could not be located following World War II. Mapping these cemeteries and ground-truthing the layouts and locations of these cemeteries may be a solution to locating the remains of these missing service members.

In November 1943, more than 1,000 U.S. Marines and sailors died wresting control of Tarawa Atoll from a Japanese garrison approximately 3,000 strong. After the battle, the Marines buried most of their dead in a series of cemeteries and small burials scattered across the island of Betio, where the assault occurred. Post-war recovery efforts on the island by the American Graves Registration Service resulted in the recovery and repatriation of several hundred servicemembers but, today, approximately 350 Marines and sailors are still unaccounted-for. This paper will discuss challenges to accounting efforts on Tarawa Atoll, created not only by the nature of the loss incident itself (a large ground loss concentrated on an island the size of Central Park), but also by rapid ongoing urbanization, climate change, and geopolitics. This paper will also discuss how these challenges may simultaneously provide opportunities for the accounting community to advance Tarawa casework.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) undertakes critical missions to locate, recover, and identify missing military personnel. In this pursuit, efficient field data management is paramount. This abstract evaluates the implementation of ESRI's Field Maps application within DPAA's operations. The application streamlines field data collection processes, enabling DPAA teams to document archaeological sites, recoveries, and associated artifacts with precision and accuracy. Its customizable forms facilitate standardized data entry, ensuring consistency across missions. Moreover, the application's offline capabilities are indispensable in remote or austere environments where connectivity is limited. By integrating seamlessly with GIS technology, Field Maps empowers DPAA analysts to conduct real-time spatial analysis, aiding in mission planning and decision-making. Ultimately, the adoption of ESRI's Field Maps application enhances the DPAA's ability to fulfill its solemn duty of bringing closure to families and honoring the sacrifices of the missing personnel.

Today, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) pursues missing servicemembers and unresolved casualties from past conflicts. Agency efforts have shown a clear need for, and benefit of, an interdisciplinary approach throughout all aspects of case progression, beginning with historical research through an historical archaeological focus, field investigations that can include archaeological fieldwork, archaeological field recovery, and finally forensic assessment at DPAA laboratories in Hawaii and Nebraska. This discussion presents two terrestrial case studies, one from French Indochina and one from Indonesia, demonstrating an approach towards recovery of missing U.S. servicemembers lost during World War Two. Many challenges arise when attempting to interpret historical space today. Both case studies highlight how historical research, with an historical archaeological focus, develops a better understanding of the circumstances of losses and contributes to efforts to account for unresolved U.S. casualties situated within a complex and dynamic landscape.

DPAA currently estimates that approximately 2,000 U.S. Sailors and Marines are entombed aboard dozens of ships and submarines that sunk during World War II in the Java and South China Seas. Large scale illegal salvaging companies have been targeting the steel and iron of these WWII-era vessels. This presentation will first outline the history of industrial scale salvaging in the Java and South China Seas, including the methodology used and why this is happening. The focus of this presentation is a discussion on what is happening to the remains of the Sailors, Marines, and other mariners when these vessels are being salvaged. Finally, we will look at what the accounting community can do to track industrial scale illegal salvaging in this part of the world.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) remains committed to finding the best tools and technologies to achieve the personnel accounting mission. To that end, an Innovation Program was launched in 2021 through the Partnerships and Innovation Directorate. The Innovation Program aims to provide a flexibly structured, collaborative space for anyone in the Agency and through our partner organizations to help find, test, and transition transformative solutions for the Agency’s identified problems. This paper will introduce the Innovation Program, DPAA’s strategic innovation focus areas, the idea submission system, and the project selection and execution structure. This programmatic framework will be supplemented by case studies of current Innovation projects aimed to showcase the breadth of scope and depth of examination of Innovation’s at DPAA.