User:Geo Swan/Veto Huapili Baker

Veto Huapili Baker is an American, from Hawaii, who went Absent without leave in 1972, when the US Army was going to send him back to the United States. He was the returning individual to have spent the longest time classified as Missing In Action.

He had fallen in love with a Vietnamese woman, and the Army would not permit him to marry her, or sponsor her to return to the United States with him.

Because Baker's ethnic heritage was Hawaiain, it was not obvious he was an American. He was able to pass for several years, but Vietnamese authorities finally expelled him in April 1975.

Upon his return to the USA he was initially processed as a deserter. But, his parting from the Army was reclassified as AWOL, permitting him to have a general discharge. Baker's wife Mai, and their children, accompanied him on his return to the USA.