The Sailors are among 2,503 service members whose names are etched in the marble walls of the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. On Sept. 20, 2024, their family members placed a bronze rosette next to their names to symbolize the recovery and identification of their remains. The rosette ceremony was part of National POW/MIA Recognition Day, which is observed nationally and globally on the third Friday of September. The observance is hosted by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) to remember American service members who were prisoners of war and those who are still missing and unaccounted for. “Our country’s commitment is that we will never ever stop looking because each and every single individual American is important in our democracy,” explained Hon. Charles K. Djou, secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC), host of the rosette ceremony.
During the ceremony, DPAA personnel read the names of 132 service members who have been recovered, identified, and returned to their loved ones since the 2023 POW/MIA Recognition Day.
Three Navy families shared the story of their recovered loved one with Commander, Navy Region Hawaii.
Cdr. Danforth Ellithorpe White
Cdr. Danforth Ellithorpe White was a Navy reconnaissance pilot who flew RA-5C planes and his final assignment had him on the USS Enterprise (CVN-65).
Marda White Turman, 55, White’s daughter who placed the rosette on the wall, explained the events leading to her father’s death: White flew a classified mission over Laos, his plane went down, and he was declared missing in action (MIA), which was updated to killed in action on Mar. 31, 1969. On that day, Turman was three months old in her mother’s womb with two infant siblings.
Turman also placed a rosette her father’s co-pilot, Lt. Ramey Leo Carpenter who also perished that day and left behind a three-year-old daughter.
In 1997, Turman and other surviving relatives were notified that the DPAA team would excavate her father’s crash site where they discovered a petri dish size amount of bone fragments. Emotion clouded Turman’s voice at times as she described the remarkable way in which her father’s identification unfolded from her father’s jawbone.
“One of them [the bone fragments used for identification], his most outstanding physical feature … his jaw, his mandible. We were able to bring him home and bury him in Arlington, Cemetery. At the time, I was 28. I was burying the father I never met.”
Turman then reflected on the importance of the rosette ceremony.
“In terms of today, why it’s important is not only to have the rosettes placed to let people know that these service members have been brought home, but also it’s an important message that our men and women fight greatly to protect our freedom and they were willing to give the ultimate sacrifice and the very least that we can do to honor them is to do whatever we can to bring them back and it helps us heal from the loss. I think for them [the fallen], the importance of bringing them home it’s a small, but big act of remembering their service. That’s why I’m here.”
Lt. Ralph Eugene Foulks Jr.
Lt. Ralph Eugene Foulks Jr. was a junior pilot who flew the A-4 Skyhawk, a single-seat attack plane based on the USS Oriskany (CVA 34).
Collen Ijuin, 67, Foulks’ sister, who placed the rosette on the commemoration wall next to her brother’s name, explained the details she knew of the night on Jan. 5, 1968, when her brother was later declared missing in action (MIA), a mystery that would go unsolved for 25 years.
“He was on an attack mission at night. It was him and the lead pilot, they took off at night and identified a convoy. The first pilot took a dive and pulled up and my brother took his dive and they never heard from him again. We don’t know what happened.”
Ijuin reflected on the time that her brother was missing and the fear about what had happened to him: her mother sent Red Cross packages that were returned, they heard rumors he might be a prisoner of war (POW), but no updates were reported for several months.
Six months after the last POW returned Foulks’ status was changed to killed in action (KIA).
In December 1988 Ijuin’s family was notified that what was likely her brother’s remains had been returned from North Vietnam. Ijuin recalled she was 12 at the time when a Navy chaplain knocked on the door late at night with the news. At that time, no testing could conclusively identify Foulks. Later when new DNA testing using the ovum was created, Foulks was positively identified. Ijuin’s family was notified of that conclusive finding 25 years to the day after he went missing, on Jan. 5, 1993.
Ijuin expressed awe for the ceremony and the work that was done to identify her brother and gratitude for the ceremony to mark the occasion. She also shared that not knowing what exactly happened to her brother still haunts her.
“I talked with my middle sister today, who was one of the first 16 ’experimental’ ROTC [Reserve Officer Training Corps] women. She retired as a USN [U.S. Navy] commander. She said she remembers that upon the DPAA examination of his remains, it seemed those had been sitting in a warehouse for a long time in Vietnam. Now I wonder all over again – what happened to my brother. I hope he never suffered.”
Lt. Cmdr. Frederick Peter Crosby
Lt. Cmdr. Frederick Peter Crosby was a Navy reconnaissance pilot based on Miramar, San Diego who flew the Vought Crusader Reconnaissance Fighter (RF-8A) from the USS Bon Homme Richard (CVA-31).
Deborah Ann Crosby, 66, Lt. Crosby’s daughter, who placed the rosette next to her father’s name on the commemoration wall, described the events that led to her father’s death.
On June 1, 1965, Lt. Crosby was on a mission to take photographs of the bridge commonly referred to as Dragon’s Jaw Bridge in North Vietnam, which had been bombed the day before. It was a foggy day and Lt. Crosby had to fly lower than usual, flying at 700 miles per hour, 300 feet off the ground, and the area was heavily defended. Lt. Crosby was hit by ground fire and the plane rolled and crashed into a fishpond.
In 2015, 50 years later, a DPAA team located the site thanks to an eyewitness to the crash, and Lt. Crosby’s alleged remains were brought back to the DPAA laboratory in Hawaii. Using DNA provided by Crosby’s aunt in 2005, the DPAA team confirmed that the remains belonged to Lt. Crosby.
Crosby visited the DPAA laboratory the day before the rosette ceremony and shared the impact of the visit.
“Coming here and being in the laboratory yesterday was really kind of remarkable to think that my father’s remains were here to be that close to my dad because there haven’t been many opportunities where I could be somewhat present to his existence in a way, so it’s really meaningful to have this opportunity to tap in the rosette behind my father’s name after 50 years being missing in action. It’s been just an amazing healing event; I guess really no real closure, but there’s a tremendous amount of healing that has taken place.”
Crosby also thanked the DPAA, Navy, the government, and the military as a whole for bringing her father home as promised for a proper burial with military honors.
“I look at the MIA-POW flag for so long it was a painful thing to look at. It was always a reminder of loss and pain and grief and when I look at the flag now it is a reminder of a promise kept, so it doesn’t hurt to look at that flag any longer.”
Search Continues for MIA Service Members
Keone J. Nakoa, the White House Asian American and Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander senior advisor, reminded those at the ceremony that the mission of all recovery agencies is ongoing.
“President Biden has been and remains deeply committed to honoring the generations of women and men and their families who served and sacrificed,” he said. “This includes pledging to seek out answers for the more than 81,000 brave personnel that are still missing. They are not, and will never be forgotten.”
This "Navy Families Honor Fallen Service Members at POW/MIA Recognition Day Rosette Ceremony" was originally found on https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/News-Stories/Term/3087/
