Title
Urging the United States Department of Defense to include the names of the 74 fallen sailors of the Destroyer U.S.S. Frank E. Evans on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Body
WHEREAS, On March 29, 1969, the officers and men of the USS Frank E. Evans departed Long Beach, California for the Western Pacific Deployment with the United States Navy to carry out the operational orders of their Commander in Chief during a time of war in Vietnam;
WHEREAS, On June 3, 1969, the USS Frank E. Evans, while on an allied naval exercise during the Vietnam War, collided with the Australian aircraft carrier, HMAS Melbourne in the South China Sea, near the coast of Vietnam; and
WHEREAS, The collision severed the ship into two sections, with the forward section sinking in less than three minutes, taking the lives of 74 American sailors; and
WHEREAS, A Philadelphia boy, Patrick M. Corcoran, was on the ship, along with five other men from Pennsylvania.
WHEREAS, Members of the United States armed forces who died during the Vietnam War have been memorialized by engraving names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C.; and
WHEREAS, The United States Department of Defense falsely maintains that the men who died as a result on the USS Frank E. Evans do not meet the criteria for inclusion on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial because the accident occurred outside the combat zone when, in fact, that ship and every other American ship in the vicinity was awarded a Vietnam Service Medal on the very day of the accident; and
WHEREAS, the Department of Defense, despite the favorable endorsement of the Department of the Navy that the names be added to "The Wall" in Washington, continues to deny the placement of the names of the lost 74 sailors on the memorial; and
WHEREAS, The Vietnam combat zone boundaries, which were ill-defined and were changed from time to time, should not be applied to exclude the names of the lost sailors from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial; ...
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