Senators fight to add 'Lost 74' sailors to Vietnam memorial
Jerry Dunleavy
06.20.19
The effort to add 74 more names to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall got one step closer in the Senate on Wednesday, even as the federal bureaucracy pushed back against the idea.
The bipartisan U.S.S. Frank E. Evans Act got its first major Senate hearing yesterday as senators on the National Parks Subcommittee made the case for why the names of the “Lost 74” sailors, who perished when their ship sank more than 100 miles outside the official Vietnam War theater in June 1969, should be added.
The National Parks Service, which manages the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial, cited the Department of Defense as part of its opposition.
Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., who introduced the bill, called yesterday’s hearing a “significant step.”
The destroyer participated in numerous combat support tours during the Vietnam War. Following one, the ship was sent to the South China Sea to participate in a Southeast Asia Treaty Organization allied exercise, where a training accident in the middle of the night resulted in the ship being cut in half by the Australian HMAS Melbourne. Seventy-four sailors died, and only one body was recovered.
“One of the qualifications is that those who perished must have been in or directly on their way to a combat zone,” said Cramer. “Because the Evans was not in or directly on its way to a combat zone, the names of those who died are not included on the wall, even though the ship had previously provided gunfire support off the coast of Vietnam including during the Tet Offensive.”
Cramer said the ship was also set to "return to combat after the exercise” and called the exclusion from the wall an “injustice” as he pointed out that around 400 names have been added to the wall since it was built.
But the National Park Service objected to the inclusion of the Lost 74's names. Deputy Director Daniel Smith said there isn't space on the wall for a large-scale addition of names or for additional names that could come as a result of the Department of Defense expanding what's considered the combat zone.
“If passed, [the Senate bill] would necessitate substantial modification, and possibly a wholesale replacement, of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall as it exists today,” Smith said on Wednesday.
Additional names have been added to the wall before, including hundreds while Ronald Reagan was president. And Cramer pointed to a recent audit by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund which found that due to duplications, miscounts, and other errors, the number of names on the wall should be 58,276 — not 58,318. The organization did not respond to a request for comment.
“The only objections I have ever heard are from the people whose job it would be to do this. We are working on sending a man to Mars, but somehow we cannot do this?” Cramer said.
Cramer had support from other senators on the subcommittee, including fellow North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven as well as the subcommittee chairman Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont.
The bill has bipartisan support too, with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., signing on as a co-sponsor. “The Vietnam Veterans Memorial honors the extraordinary sacrifices made by our Vietnam War heroes, but there are still 74 names missing from the iconic black wall,” Gillibrand said earlier this year.
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