Families look for those missing during war

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - People from across New Mexico and even other states flocked to Albuquerque, hoping to get news about their loved ones who went missing during war.
    
Some have been waiting seven decades to bring them home.
    
Saturday, they met with those trying to find them.

December 7, 1941 a day that lives in infamy.
    
For Charles Cameron, it's a day that changed his family forever.

His uncle, Milo Phillips, was on board the USS Oklahoma when it was bombed at Pearl Harbor.

“I remember as a child as long as I lived at home, every Memorial Day we were part of the parade. We were at the park,” Cameron said.
    
Crew members were removed from the ship, but many were buried in unmarked graves.
    
Phillips' remains were never identified. 
    
He's one of more than 70,000 American service members from World War II still missing.

“It was just such a devastation to them. Something we lived with at every family gathering,” Cameron said.
    
Cameron was one of around 140 family members who walked into the Defense POW/missing Personnel family briefing this weekend.
  
The goals of these briefings are to update families on the efforts to locate, repatriate and identify their loved ones.
     
Ronald Field gave DNA samples in hopes one day it will help identify his uncle, who went missing in Korea.

“We have a lot of people here today that are actually representing loved ones that are trying to rebuild and reconstruct who they were and where they came from,” Field said.
    
But New Mexicans weren't the only ones who traveled to find answers.
    
People came in from Colorado, Texas and Arizona for any update or any clue as to where their missing family members are. Most are looking for closure.
    
Leda Clark’s uncle, Russell Englade, was declared missing in action in 1950.

“I would like to know more about him and what happened. You know you think at 18…what you know at 18 and what he went through before he died,” Clark said.

The Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office's last family briefing in Albuquerque was nearly four years ago.