'Miracle': Fierce Advocate for Missing Troops Learns MIA Brother Recovered

When Ann Mills-Griffiths sent out her regular National League of POW/MIA Families newsletter this month, she included an announcement that Navy Cmdr. James B. Mills, missing in Vietnam since 1966, had been recovered, his remains positively identified by the Pentagon.

She did not mention that he was her own brother.

"DPAA [Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency] announced on 8/24/18 that CDR James B. Mills, USNR, CA, was accounted for on 8/20/18," Mills-Griffiths' simple announcement read.

The newsletter said that the accounting for Mills and another MIA from Vietnam, Air Force Col. Richard A. Kibbey, "brings the number still missing from the Vietnam War down to 1,594."

So why did Mills-Griffiths withhold that the latest identification was that of Jimmy, her older brother by just 11 months?

"It would've been wildly inappropriate," she told Military.com in an interview.

In her role as head of a POW/MIA advocacy group, "I've never mentioned my brother's case in any official capacity," she said.

Fighting for All Families

Given her position, in which she works closely with the government on recoveries and policy, Mills-Griffiths said she didn't like to draw special attention to her brother's case.

"The other part is we never expected to get my brother accounted for -- ever," she said.

At age 77, Mills-Griffiths said she had no plans to retire from her position at the League, where she currently serves as chairman, just because her brother has been found.

She acknowledges that she has been combative, and at times controversial, in pressing various administrations and defense secretaries over the years for a full accounting on the missing.

She has also become a lightning rod for other advocacy groups and what she calls the "nut fringe."

She has been outspoken in accusing some groups of raising false hopes among the families that their loved ones would come back alive, if only the so-described appeasers and bureaucrats in government would get out of the way.

Mills-Griffiths once had a staff of seven. She now has just one staffer, but she dismissed any suggestion of stepping down as head of the League.

"Why would I do that just because of my brother? I have to keep [DPAA] on the right track," she said. "I'm still trying to make sure DPAA is informed and going in the right direction."

Her longevity with the issue has proven invaluable to the government in getting more cooperation from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, according to DPAA officials.

Despite Mills-Griffiths' reticence to give her brother special attention in her official role, he still got a hero's welcome back home. At California's Bakersfield High School, where Mills lettered in three sports for the "Drillers" and was active in student government before graduating in 1958, a welcome home event in his honor featured current students.

They paraded on California Avenue in front of the school, sang the national anthem, waved flags and chanted "Once a Driller, Always a Driller," Bakersfield.com reported.

"This is a very teachable moment, and the kids are embracing it big time," said history instructor Ken Hooper.

"If he was part of my family, I would want to welcome him home," senior Kareli Medina said. "He's a Driller. We are his family."

"That was amazing," Mills-Griffiths said of the rally at the school where her late father, E.C. Mills, was once vice principal. "It was really something that they took that up and had that nice patriotic demonstration. Nicely done, guys."

A "Miracle" Discovery

For 52 years, the rib bone of an American had been at the bottom of the South China Sea in shallow waters off the North Vietnamese coastal village of Quynh Phuong.

The rib had been there since Sept. 21, 1966, when a Navy F-4B Phantom from Fighter Squadron 21, flying off the carrier Coral Sea on an armed reconnaissance mission to North Vietnam, disappeared from radar without a "Mayday" or contact with other aircraft. The reasons for the disappearance are still unknown.

From 1993-2003, Defense Department teams conducted a total of 15 investigations in a fruitless effort to determine what had happened to the aircraft and where it went down.

Everything changed in 2006, when a fisherman from the village snagged something in his net. He pulled up what turned out to be part of a cockpit canopy.

Joint field activities by DPAA's forensics and scuba teams resumed, including five underwater investigations, the agency said in a release. More parts of the aircraft were pulled up.

In 2011, the Air Force Life Science Equipment Laboratory, now part of DPAA, concluded that the aircraft was the one flown by pilot Capt. James Bauder, then 35, of La Canada, California, and his radar intercept officer, Mills -- who would have been 78 on Aug. 31.

In 2017, the recovery teams found bone material. And in June 2018, DPAA determined through DNA analysis that the remains were those of Capt. Bauder.

The teams had found not a trace of Mills' remains. Mills-Griffiths said the family had long ago accepted that Mills' remains would never be found, but were grateful that the F-4B had been located and Bauder's family had been notified.

"None of us ever had any of what folks would call 'false hopes,'" she said. "What are the chances? It's not like we knew he was on the ground, it's not like anybody last saw him alive ... Our chances of ever knowing anything specific were not high and we knew that all along."

Mills-Griffiths said she learned earlier this year that divers were about to go down on the site again.

"If you don't get it, that's still the last time I want you to go there," Mills-Griffiths said she told DPAA.

In June, another DPAA excavation turned up new remains.

"It turned out to be a rib bone, and they were able to get a cut and take a DNA match quickly," Mills-Griffiths said. "It was a virtual miracle."

New Headstone at Arlington

Cmdr. James Mills, a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, joined the Navy through the Reserve Officers' Training Corps. His eyesight wasn't good enough to become a pilot under the standards of the time, and so he became a backseat Radar Intercept Officer on Phantoms, Mills-Griffiths said.

He was a lieutenant junior grade when his plane went missing on his second tour off Vietnam.

He flew off the carrier Midway on his first tour. He did not have a spouse or children.

Mills-Griffiths said her brother had volunteered to return "so that other radar officers who had wives and kids wouldn't have to go back."

"He was not an optimist" about the war, as were so many others who served at the time, she said. "He believed in what he was doing, even though he didn't believe in the way the war was being run."

Mills-Griffiths said she can't remember how many times she's been to Vietnam and the region.

"I stopped counting at 32," she said.

In that time, the Vietnamese officials she first knew as junior officers and diplomats have come into leadership positions, she said.

Her brother already has a place at Arlington National Cemetery. The headstone over an empty grave for James B. Mills simply reads "In Memory."

DPAA officials said that Mills' name also is listed on the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

"A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for," DPAA said.

Mills-Griffiths said a ceremony for the burial of her brother's remains will be held at Arlington on June 24 next year. The headstone will be replaced with a traditional one listing his name, rank, date of birth and date of death on Sept. 21, 1966.

This year, National POW/MIA Recognition Day will be observed on Friday, Sept. 21.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.