Max has been trained to use his nose to find remains that are 25 to 40 years old.

The military enlists two
sharp-nosed dogs in the search
for service personnel missing
from the Vietnam War

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By Gregg K. Kakesako
gkakesako@starbulletin.com

The military will use two mainland police dogs for the first time in the search for the remains of missing American servicemen from the Vietnam War.

The two German shepherds have different but essential skills in finding missing persons.

The dogs and their handlers -- members of the Rhode Island State Trooper's K-9 corps -- will spend 35 days in southern Vietnam, beginning with seven digs near Da Nang and moving southward, said Lt. Col. Jerry Ohara, spokesman for Joint Task Force-Full Accounting.

The dogs will join a 10-member excavation team, part of the 72nd mission conducted by JTF-FA and the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory, in the continuing search for missing Americans in Vietnam. The mission includes about 95 Americans who will join representatives from Vietnam in recovery excavations planned for 15 provinces. Twenty-seven MIA cases will be investigated.

The dogs have been at Hickam Air Force Base for nearly 10 days getting accustomed to a tropical climate, riding on helicopters and running through drills and simulations.

CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM For the first time, the military will use police dogs to help search for the remains of missing servicemen from the Vietnam War. Max will be used in the search.

"There was a foot of snow on the ground, and it was 20 degrees when we left home," said Rhode Island State Trooper Matthew Zarrella, who has been a K-9 handler for almost all of his 13 years in law enforcement.

One of the dogs, 1-year-old Max, has been trained just to locate human remains by looking for the scent left by certain chemical byproducts caused by decomposition, Zarrella said.

"I got him from the pound when he was 6 months old, and I have been working with him since then.

"What we're about to do in Vietnam has never been tried before. There is no data anywhere in the country or in the world that supports or disproves that this can be done."

However, based on past experiences of dog handlers, Zarrella is confident that Max will be successful in sniffing out remains that might be as old as four decades.

The other dog, a 9-year-old female named Panzer, is trained to find missing persons and drowning victims.

The initial seven search sites are possible crash areas involving F-100 jet fighters, helicopters and trucks, and may contain remains of Air Force and Army personnel.

CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM A demonstration involving dogs trained to search for MIA remains took place yesterday at Hickam Air Force Base, where Rhode Island State Trooper Matthew Zarrella got his foot over the leashes of Panzer, left, and Max.

"We have witnesses who are very credible and who can point to a specific area but not to a specific spot," Ohara said. "These will be test cases. Hopefully, these dogs point us to the way home."

Zarrella said Max has been trained to hunt for remains that may be buried as deep as a foot.

"When he sits," Zarrella added, "that tells me he got it."

Then members of Camp Smith-based JTF-FA and Hickam-based U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory will take over with an anthropologist digging a test pit.

Joint Task Force FullAccounting Mission: To achieve fullest possible accounting of Americans missing from the Vietnam War Formed: 1992 Staff: 160 Headquarters: Camp Smith, Halawa Heights MIAs: 1,889 Cases resolved: 363

Ohara said the idea to use dogs grew out of the briefing the Pentagon holds each summer for the National League of Families to update families on what is being done in the search for the MIAs from the Vietnam War. There are 1,889 Americans still unaccounted for in Southeast Asia: 1,444 in Vietnam, 381 in Laos, 56 in Cambodia and eight in the territorial waters of China.

Zarrella was contacted by Ohara's office, and a team member was sent to Rhode Island to test the dogs.

If the experiment is successful, Ohara said there are at least a dozen other areas the team will inspect.

Zarrella and Max spent nearly an hour yesterday demonstrating the techniques that will be used in Vietnam. Human bones maintained by JTF-FA as training aids were buried by Zarrella about an hour before the demonstration began in a coral and gravel area adjacent to a runway of Honolulu Airport.

"The longer the scent remains in the soil," Zarrella said, "it's easier for the dogs to locate them. ... That's because they have chemicals that still give off a scent."

Working through the gravel, coral and haole koa trees, Max had no trouble picking up the scent and locating the remains.

In one case, Zarrella said the hunt was made easier since Max was working downwind and immediately homed in on a pile of coral, started digging and then marked the spot by sitting.

Dr. John Turco, a Rhode Island veterinarian in charge of the dogs' welfare, said the hardest things facing the animals are "a lot of unknowns, such as unexploded ordnances, snakes, wildlife and the heat."

Ohara said the only thing the military had to provide was an aircraft to get the dog team to Vietnam and covering Zarrella and Turco's food and lodging costs.

The dogs and the recovery team will leave Hickam on Monday.