Tran Khanh Phoi, who lost 19 family members during the war, spends decades helping search for the remains of American servicemen missing in action in Quang Tri Province.

“For a long time I harbored a deep hatred for Americans. I hated them to the core—truly detested them.”

Few have endured as much suffering as this man. Tran Khanh Phoi lost 19 family members during the war.

Phoi said his father died when he was six. "I don’t even remember his face, but I’ll never forget how he was killed. They shot him in our home, right in front of my eyes. That moment has haunted me my whole life.”

Phoi’s brothers were tortured to death in enemy prisons, or died from the aftermath of torture. His sister was killed by a landmine. None of them ever had the chance to marry, or even to fall in love, he said, adding that he believed "the deaths of my father and siblings were directly or indirectly tied to the Americans. That’s the undeniable truth.”

And yet it was Phoi who spent 30 years helping search for the remains of American servicemen missing in action in Quang Tri Province, his hometown and one of the war’s fiercest battlegrounds. It’s possible that one or more of those missing soldiers had a hand in the deaths of his loved ones, but no one can say for certain.

In a valley in Cop hamlet, Huong Hoa district, Quang Tri, a group of American soldiers and scientists were carefully digging a large hole beside a creek.

Brian Miller, a member of the US National Guard, described his typical workday: "We wake up, we get our morning briefing, and come down here, and get assigned a shift, either a dig shift or a screening shift, go look through all the dirt that we dig out.”

Brian was doing all his digging with a ‘good old shovel’. No heavy machinery—not even a power drill—could be seen on site.

"It gives us better control and it disrupts the site less. Bones are fragile and some of the evidence is very fragile,” said Dr. Larkin Kennedy, a forensic anthropologist, who was checking on Brian and the others to make sure the soil was dug up with care and precision, put properly into buckets, and then passed along a human chain of local villagers to a screening station.

They were searching for the remains of an American serviceman, who’s been missing for more than 50 years.

Part of the site where the remains of a US serviceman missing in action during the Vietnam war are being excavated in Cop village, Quang Tri Province.

On June 8, 1967, four American servicemen were on a reconnaissance mission over Quang Tri when their UH-1E helicopter was hit. Three survived and the other man was presumed dead. He and the helicopter remained missing until a group of local Van Kieu ethnic people, including Nguyen Van Pho, discovered the wreckage in 1977.

According to Pho, he and other locals found the helicopter when they were clearing the forest to create more cultivation land. “Its structure, including the front and the tail, was still largely intact”. 

Site investigations began in 1993, and this is now the third recovery mission. 

US Ambassador to Vietnam Marc Knapper, visiting the excavation site in April, said the search for missing Americans has predated normalization and “this has really been essential to building trust, to building confidence between the two countries, to setting the stage for reconciliation, to setting the stage, really, for normalization in 1995.”

"We would not have achieved that without the trust and the confidence that this, the MIA search, has created in those days,” he said. 

For Rob Ingram, a forensic archaeologist with the DPAA, it was his 39th mission. "We talk to a lot of witnesses that remember the war and remember the incidents. It’s a lesson, I think, in the power of collaboration. Our ability to work with our VNOSMP counterparts in an area where there was conflict in the past, I think, is a reminder that we are all friends and neighbors if we choose to be,” said Rob. 

Staff Sergeant Loc Dinh of the US Air Force said, “The soldiers that went out, that were fought here before, they were left around our age. So having the opportunity to go back means a lot to me, and hopefully find the remains and bring them back home to their families who have been waiting for so long for them.”

Loc, a young man about the same age as Tran Khanh Phoi when he first got involved in MIA work in 1993 and has since participated, in one way or another, in almost all missions in Quang Tri including the excavation in Cop hamlet. Their initial reasons for joining the mission, however, were probably not the same.

Phoi said he got involved early—since the day he started working at the provincial Foreign Affairs Department, actually. "It was a job, but also a personal interest of mine. I wanted to know how Americans find their missing servicemen so I could help my people find theirs.”

Screening is part of an MIA mission. In the lower photo, Tran Khanh Phoi works (R) at an excavation site.

A mission typically begins with extensive research of war records and first-hand accounts. Then come interviews with witnesses, site surveys, excavation, and finally identification. There’s just one rule—no name is released until DNA testing ascertains the identity of the missing individual. The process hasn’t changed much over the years and, in general, is straightforward.

If it really was just a “personal interest” — just so he could “know how Americans find their missing servicemen” — then Phoi shouldn’t have needed 30 years and a lifetime of dedication to do it.

“My wife and kids have always been supportive of what I do. I lost count of the number of rice balls she’s had to make and put in my backpack before I leave for work,” said Phoi. 

Phoi was a scout, which involved locating informants, witnesses, and surveying possible recovery sites. Makes sense. He was born and raised here in Quang Tri and should know the land better than anyone. But experience offers no shield. Every MIA search mission courts mortal danger.

“That day, we started to climb Dong Tri mountain at 9 AM. It is one of the tallest peaks in Quang Tri. It was scorching hot the whole way, and it took us four hours to get to the top and start working,” Phoi recalled.

Naturally, he should know that sometimes the road is just plain impassable, because right beside it is a cliff, and there's barely enough room for one car. He also should know it will be sweltering hot—that by high noon he’d better finish digging himself a pit to rest in to survive the baking summer sun.

“We were working on the peak of Dong Tri mountain when it started raining heavily—so heavily, in fact, that we had to leave the site immediately. We tried to find our way down through the jungle, but it was pouring and we had no flashlight,” said Phoi.

"We lost track of one another. I managed to get to the foot of the mountain at around 9 PM. Luckily we were reunited safe and sound. Green leeches were clinging to us, and we were soaked, not just with rainwater, but also blood. We rarely cried, but that day all of us were bawling.”

And Phoi should know that he would come home to his wife and kids in a soaked shirt stained red, only to do it all over again the next week. Why?

Phoi's brother died on the battlefield in Cambodia in 1981 and his remains were repatriated by his comrades-in-arms. Phoi said he’ll never forget that day when his mom and he visited his brother's grave in the martyr cemetery.

"She was so happy. It was the kind of happiness that only a mother who’s lost her son and then finally found his remains would understand.”

Though he didn’t say the pain subsided, Phoi told us the puzzling happiness he saw in his mom that day took over and has haunted him ever since. That’s why, he said, he has kept trying to shed the blood, sweat, and tears that come with his part of the job for more than 30 years.

Several weeks after US President Richard Nixon announced the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in late January 1973, the Vietnamese Office for Seeking Missing Persons was established. The first joint MIA mission was conducted in 1988. 

Vietnamese Deputy Foreign Minister Do Hung Viet elaborated that the efforts began as early as 1973. Initially these activities were carried out unilaterally by Vietnam, and only later did cooperation with the US commence. 

"The fact that Vietnam acted promptly after the Paris Peace Accords demonstrates our commitment to the United States. At the same time, it reflects the profound humanism of the Vietnamese people,” Deputy Minister Viet added.

So far, 740 missing Americans in the Vietnam War have been identified. 1,232 are still missing – quite a long way left to go, according to Commander Travis Walters of DPAA's Detachment 2.

The current work in Cop hamlet, Travis said, is trending well. "We have found some possible bone, and aircraft wreckage, and some we call ‘material evidence’, and some life support as well.”

No search mission is ever easy. Some went on for decades without results while others were deemed impossible from the start, as with the case of Navy Lt. James Mills. Mills went missing during a mission in Vietnam in 1966. For nearly 50 years, his case was considered hopeless, even by his own sister.

According to Ann Mills-Griffith, Lt. Mills’ younger sister and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National League of POW/MIA Families, her brother simply disappeared in an F-4, and “there was no knowledge, no observance, nothing on the case that he was involved in.”

Ann’s job is to represent hundreds of American families of missing soldiers and push for “the fullest possible accounting for the missing and repatriation of all recoverable remains.” But given her position, Ann said she didn't want to draw special attention to her brother's case.

Moreover, Lt. James Mills’ plane went down in a river mouth that led to the sea, turning the search mission into what the Vietnamese call “finding a needle in the ocean.”

"In all the years that I ended up the countless trips I made there, I never ever raised my brother's case with Vietnamese authorities. And the one I met with the most was Nguyen Co Thach (former Vietnamese Foreign Minister). And he did raise my brother's case to me. And I did not really discuss it with him, but he gave many commitments,” Ann recalled.

Despite years of tireless effort and unwavering patience, the Vietnam-US joint search teams found no trace of Mills’ remains. When Ann learned of yet another mission, she was prepared to sign a waiver, saying it would be the final attempt if nothing turned up. But then, as Ann described it, a ‘miracle’ happened. During an excavation in June 2018, her brother’s remains were finally found.

“Relieved,” Ann said when asked about how she felt. “It was very meaningful to the people, the Vietnamese officials, that I'd been dealing with for so long. And that's why I know they had a tremendous role in making sure that it happened.”

At that moment, she may have felt the same happiness Tran Khanh Phoi saw in his mother years ago.

Phoi’s mother, Hoang Thi Thanh, is honored as a Heroic Vietnamese Mother in 1999.

"My mom encouraged me to keep going with the MIA mission. My siblings said they wouldn’t try to persuade me, that I’m more than wise enough to decide for myself…But they told me ‘If mom was that happy that our brother came home, so will other moms out there be when they get to reunite with their missing sons.’ And I thought: Maybe, somewhere out there in the US a mother is waiting for her son. And someone like me is also waiting for their sibling to come home,” said Phoi.

According to Deputy Foreign Minister Do Hung Viet, there’s a clear distinction between the US government, who initiated the war in Vietnam, and the American people, who are very much like Vietnamese people.

"Most of us wanted peace. Most of us hated wars. And our collaboration in finding the remains of American servicemen, who were also just ordinary fathers, husbands, and sons, mends all of our wounds. Overcoming that distinction was our biggest challenge, but after 50 years, we did it, together,” said Mr. Viet, who told us he, too, had an uncle who died in 1968 during the war and is still missing.

And Commander Travis Walters also has his own story to tell. His own stepfather was a Vietnam War vet, who fought and was based at Khe Sanh. He himself suffered from the impact of dioxin as a US soldier being there.

"So I learned early on as a boy what it was like understanding the consequences of war. I’ve been to combat two times myself, so I understand the impact of war, and it's certainly something that should be avoided at all costs,” Travis said. 

What followed the war in Vietnam was another half-century of uncertainty, longing, and backbreaking work to right the wrong that befell thousands of families in Vietnam and the US. War has no winners, and peace, no losers.

“The landscape here is beautiful. My last mission I was in Quang Binh up there in the mountains with the steep cliff faces. It's just such a beautiful place to work.”

“I really liked the summer rolls, the spring rolls. I think we had some yesterday. I do like the morning glory. I think that’s really delicious. We have that a lot.”

“Our relationship with the locals is great. In fact, every time we roll in, they have bright smiles. We really do enjoy working with them. They are great, they like to talk. We use our language to communicate with them. We learn a little bit about them and they learn a little bit about us.”

“Talking sign language a lot, use my hands, you know, because I'm not very good at Vietnamese, but we'll say, oh, we're tall or you're short or something like that. We’ll be like he’s being sad, something like that. So we make fun of each other and have fun over there. That’s very good.”

Said Rob Ingram, Captain Steven Liu, Dr. Larkin Kennedy, and Brian Miller, members of the American team who are working side by side with Vietnamese partners in Cop hamlet. They don’t speak the same language—but that’s rarely a problem. Conversations unfold through hand gestures, shared meals, and laughter that needs no translation. And all around them the land listens.

Sandbag steps built at the excavation site help MIA team members move safely, especially in rainy weather.

For Rob, each successful mission renews the purpose behind the work. "Anytime we can bring the remains of a service member home, that reinvigorates our love for the job.”

Hard. Rewarding. Words that barely scratch the surface. But sometimes, what happens out there can’t quite be explained—only felt. Perhaps the missing want to be found. Perhaps they, too, are trying to find their way home. And maybe, just maybe, someone hears them.

That was the feeling veteran scout Tran Khanh Phoi couldn’t shake one quiet afternoon years ago…

“I have a memory... one I’ve never told anyone,” Phoi said. 

It happened at Thien Tranh Hill in Quang Tri. The Americans were working with a Vietnamese team, including Phoi, searching for a missing US pilot. A witness had reported that he was downed at Cam Lo, near the Vietnam-Laos border. The team followed that lead to the site. The excavation began.

Once. No results. A second time. Still, nothing.

The midday sun hung heavy. Dust clung to every breath. Tools moved slower. What started as a mission now felt like a ritual—searching for something long gone, maybe never there. For a moment even time seemed to hesitate—stuck between hope and surrender. And that’s when it happened.

Phoi said he was just sitting there, and he didn't know why, but something inside nudged him. He turned to one of the American anthropologists and said—almost absentmindedly, "Let’s try over there, just beyond that crevice. I’m sure he’s there.”

No maps. No markers. Just a feeling. Five, maybe six meters away from where they'd searched twice before, they dug. And then - bones.

“The pilot! Still in his flight suit!,” Phoi said.  

The American team works alongside their Vietnamese partners at the excavation site in Cop hamlet.

The team found more than bones that day -- they found some truth, some closure, a human connection between men who once considered themselves mortal enemies.

And maybe that’s why people like Rob keep coming back. And why people like Phoi, despite everything they’ve lost, keep showing up.

From left: Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Do Hung Viet, Captain Steve Liu, and US Ambassador to Vietnam Marc Knapper at the screening station in Cop village, Quang Tri province, in April 2025.

That same thread runs through another moment, right here at the MIA field in Cop hamlet. On this very soil marked by loss, two men stood side by side. Deputy Foreign Minister Do Hung Viet, and US Ambassador Marc Knapper - shoulder to shoulder, witnessed the painstaking search for the missing. 

The handshake between the two men was firm, deliberate, and deeply symbolic. In that moment, they embodied what healing truly looks like.

"The MIA work reflects the compassion of the Vietnamese people. Without that compassion, we could never have overcome the pain of war, never set aside the bitterness to search for those once called our enemies even as so many of our martyrs remain unaccounted for. That compassion is the foundation of everything," said Deputy Minister Viet. 

"It’s just an amazing effort, which could not have taken place without the cooperation and the really humane efforts of the Vietnamese government in Hanoi and provincial authorities here in Quang Tri," said Ambassasor Knapper, whose father fought in Quang Tri in 1966 and 1967.  

"I know he would be very proud of the work we’re doing today. Not just to identify missing Americans, but also missing Vietnamese. My dad believed deeply in reconciliation. He wanted to see Vietnam at peace and prospering. And I believe he would see this MIA effort as a vital part of that shared future - a Vietnam that is secure, peaceful, and a close friend of the United States,” he said.