By Damien Cave Linh Pham
The tombstones said 鈥渦nknown martyr.鈥 The bones were decades old and covered in reddish mud, staining the white lab coats of a half-dozen visiting scientists.
鈥淭his tooth good?鈥 asked a junior researcher, holding up a jawbone pulled from a grave.
鈥淣o, too decayed,鈥 said his boss, an experienced geneticist. 鈥淚t has a copper dental crown.鈥
The search for around 2,600 missing Americans from the Vietnam War has been a first-order issue for Washington and Hanoi ever since the conflict ended. But on that humid June afternoon in northern Vietnam, grave diggers with Ph.D.鈥檚 were gathering the bones of Vietnam鈥檚 own missing warriors, whose ranks exceed one million, with an urgency and reverence befitting a task long overdue.
The scientists were there to advance a recent breakthrough by putting it to use. A few months earlier, they and their partners 鈥 including the International Commission on Missing Persons, in The Hague 鈥 had figured out the chemistry and computing required to identify remains as badly degraded as those often found in Vietnam鈥檚 acidic, tropical soil. For the first time, tiny snips of DNA taken from bones up to 70 years old could be used to link the country鈥檚 fallen soldiers to distant relatives, unlocking lost truths and deeper healing.