What Remains: Bringing America’s Missing Home from the Vietnam War

by Sarah E. Wagner

Nearly 1,600 Americans are still unaccounted for and presumed dead from the Vietnam War. These are the stories of those who mourn and continue to search for them.

For many families the Vietnam War remains unsettled. Nearly 1,600 Americans--and more than 300,000 Vietnamese--involved in the conflict are still unaccounted for. In What Remains Sarah E. Wagner tells the stories of America's missing service members and the families and communities that continue to search for them. From the scientists who work to identify the dead using bits of bone unearthed in Vietnamese jungles to the relatives who press government officials to find the remains of their loved ones, Wagner introduces us to the men and women who seek to bring the missing back home. Through their experiences she examines the ongoing toll of America's most fraught war.

Every generation has known the uncertainties of war. Collective memorials, such as the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery, testify to the many service members who never return, their fates still unresolved. But advances in forensic science have provided new and powerful tools to identify the remains of the missing, often from the merest trace--a tooth or other fragment. These new techniques have enabled military experts to recover, repatriate, identify, and return the remains of lost service members. So promising are these scientific developments that they have raised the expectations of military families hoping to locate their missing. As Wagner shows, the possibility of such homecomings compels Americans to wrestle anew with their memories, as with the weight of their loved ones' sacrifices, and to reevaluate what it means to wage war and die on behalf of the nation.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

304 pages, Hardcover

Published November 5, 2019

About the author

Sarah E. Wagner is Associate Professor of Anthropology at George Washington University. She has written widely on war and its devastations, focusing in particular on forensic efforts to recover and identify the victims of violence in both the United States and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and is the author of two previous books, To Know Where He Lies and, with Lara J. Nettelfield, Srebrenica in the Aftermath of Genocide. She has received a number of awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Reviews

[Ernie Tidball · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was ok, but not great. The book is more of a focus on the forensics of accounting then the actual stories. I found it incredibly deep and struggled to turn the pages in a few areas, due to sheer boredom. The author flips between stories constantly so it’s difficult to follow.

[William]

An interesting read. A lot less is written about the forensics and investigations than I expected The majority of the book seems more centred and focused on the memories of the family members, their communities and the effect thereof on their lives. Regardless it was informative. She touches on the last known alive cases briefly. Most books on this issue seem to do the same. It’s all about remains. I however still am skeptical of identifications made by one tooth or fragment
The Vietnamese are famous for “salting” so called crash sites and graves. They could easily resolve most of the cases that occurred over or on land. Too bad the author doesn’t delve into that aspect of the POW/MIA issue.

[versarbre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, it's rare that here an anthropologist who finally takes up the issue of American militarism and some minimal analysis of military projects (a little bit on the internal hierarchy too), albeit peripherally. It tells a clear story, which makes anthropologists closer to public story-telling.