Remains of Father Emil Kapaun, MOH recipient, could be found

Analyst: Remains of Father Emil Kapaun, MOH recipient, could be found
The Wichita Eagle (MCT)
By Roy Wenzl
Published: August 20, 2013

The senior Pentagon analyst in charge of finding Korean War troops missing in action says there is a “better than even” chance that the body of Medal of Honor soldier Father Emil Kapaun will eventually be found buried in a national cemetery in Hawaii.

Finding Kapaun’s remains would be big news, not only to the U.S. military – which awarded him the Medal of Honor in April – but to the Catholic Church, which is deciding whether the Kansas native and Army chaplain will become a saint.

“It would be wonderful,” said Maj. Gen. Donald Rutherford, a Catholic priest who is the chief of chaplains for the U.S. Army. “It would be great, especially as the church is moving toward canonization.”

Friends of Kapaun’s who were prisoners of war say Chinese Army guards buried Kapaun in a shallow unmarked grave after he died of starvation and disease in a North Korean prison camp in May 1951. The assumption since then by the Army has always been that Kapaun’s remains are still there.
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Korean War MIA laid to rest after Chosin Reservoir battle

Marine Cpl. Clarence Huff laid to rest 62 years after his combat death in Korean War
Published: Thursday, August 16, 2012
By Brian Albrecht
RITTMAN, Ohio

Clarence "Bud" Huff Jr.'s story didn't end when he was killed 62 years ago on a frozen hilltop in Korea.

The 20-year-old Marine corporal who grew up in Hinckley was laid to rest in his latest and last grave Wednesday at the Ohio Western Reserve National Cemetery in Rittman.

Huff was one of the 15,000 Marines suddenly surrounded by 120,000 Chinese troops at the Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War.

For 17 days the Marines battled their way out of the mountains. Huff's company was sent to hold a hilltop to cover the retreat. By the time the company was relieved, only 20 were still able to fight.

Huff may have been among several Marines buried at the base of that hill. Fifty-seven other Ohio Marines died in a battle that cost more than 4,000 Marine casualties and 25,000-plus Chinese troops.
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Remains of soldier MIA since 1951 come home after Korean War

Remains of soldier MIA since 1951 come home
The Associated Press
Posted : Saturday Mar 24, 2012 11:17:45 EDT

CALUMET, Mich. — More than six decades after Army Pfc. Arthur Leiviska died in a Korean prisoner of war camp, the soldier will be buried with full military honors on Memorial Day at a cemetery in his hometown in the Upper Peninsula.

Leiviska’s remains were among those of more than 4,200 dead soldiers that were returned in 1954, but his weren’t identified until 2010. His relatives were located and notified over the past few months, The Daily Mining Gazette in Houghton reported Saturday.

Leiviska was 18 when he was reported missing in action in 1951.

His remains will be buried in Calumet at Lake View Cemetery, where a marker remembering Leiviska is already placed.
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Remains of Korean War MIA identified after 60 years

Laflin soldier's remains identified 60 years after disappearance

BY BOB KALINOWSKI, STAFF WRITER
Published: July 20, 2011

More than 60 years after he was reported missing following a Korean War battle, the remains of an Army soldier from Laflin have been identified and will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., the military announced today.

The remains of Army Pfc. Peter Kubic, who went missing in South Korea at age 22, will be laid to rest in the revered cemetery Thursday, the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office announced.

On Feb. 12, 1951, Kubic was assigned to the 2nd Infantry Division in South Korea, when his division came under attack near Hoengsong. Following the battle, Kubic was reported missing in action, authorities said.

In the early 1990s, North Korean forces gave the United States 208 boxes of remains believed to contain the remains of up to 400 U.S. servicemen, the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office said.

Scientists from the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory used mitochondrial DNA to match Kubic's remains with his sister, authorities said. Kubic’s military identification tags were included with the boxes of remains handed over to the Untied States, officials said.



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Laflin soldier remains identified

After over 60 years, Daytona Beach soldier's remains are coming home

Many people do not know how many were not accounted for after Korea.

KOREAN UNACCOUNTED FOR
(Bodies not identified/bodies not recovered) 8,176
Prisoner of War 2,045

Killed in Action 1,794

Missing in Action 4,245

Non-battle 92

Total: 8,176

After over 60 years, Daytona Beach soldier's remains are coming home
By Jason Wheeler, Volusia County Reporter
Last Updated: Friday, April 22, 2011 2:58 PM
DAYTONA BEACH --
The son of a U.S. soldier, killed during the Korean War, is getting ready to lay his father to rest -- 61 years after he died.

Sergeant First Class James Caldwell's remains were were excavated from a mass grave by the North Korean government in the 90's, and turned over to the U.S.

DNA helped identify the remains at the POW-MIA Accountability Center.

Johnston Caldwell was a toddler when his father disappeared in 1950.

For Caldwell, he and his sister said their goodbyes years ago.

"I lost my dad when I was a kid, only 4 1/2 years of age," Johnston Caldwell said. "I never got to know that much about him except what my mother told me, so we kind of buried him a long time ago."

James Caldwell's remains are being flown to Volusia County on Monday. They will be met by a full military honor guard, as well as the president of the local Korean War Veterans Assocation, Robert McGuire.

According to McGuire, Caldwell's family is lucky. Many more families are still waiting for word of their loved ones.
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Daytona Beach soldier's remains are coming home

Here is one more story I came across that will warm your heart a bit more. It is about the Vietnam War and a group of veterans, police and firefighters making a difference.

KIA Man’s Dog Tag Returned to Family by Nam Knights
Biker group returns fallen soldier’s dog tag
By AUDREY PARENTE, Staff writer

March 10, 2011 – DAYTONA BEACH — At 16, Darlene Woodruff looked up to her soldier cousin, Army Sgt. Robert Melvin Fletcher, who wrote letters to her from the jungles of Vietnam.

The thought of him not coming home never crossed her mind. But on Mother’s Day in 1968, she learned of his death.

“I remember thinking — wondering — what kind of things he had faced over there as such a young man,” Woodruff said. “I remember thinking he had done something far greater than I had done or would ever do.”

More than four decades later, as part of an annual Bike Week party Thursday morning, she learned how her cousin died.

At a special ceremony at the Veterans of Foreign War Post 1590, she watched her sister, Sharron Blais, clutch his dog tag and hug the soldier in whose arms he died.

The former soldier, retired steelworker Clifford William Searcy Jr., found his way to Daytona Beach and Fletcher’s family as part of a chain of events that began in 1998 when a Wall Street trader bought a sack of 100 dog tags from a Vietnamese peasant. The journey ended with Searcy telling Woodruff and Blais the story of their cousin’s final moments.
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KIA Man’s Dog Tag Returned to Family by Nam Knights

Lost Korean War battalion awaits MIA decision

Lost Korean War battalion awaits MIA decision

By Charles J. Hanley - The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Jul 18, 2010 9:59:41 EDT

SEOUL, South Korea — Trapped by two Chinese divisions, troops of the 8th U.S. Cavalry Regiment were left to die in far northern Korea, abandoned by the U.S. command in a Korean War episode viewed as one of the most troubling in American military history.

Sixty years later those fallen soldiers, the lost battalion of Unsan, are stranded anew.

North Korea is offering fresh clues to their remains. American teams are ready to re-enter the North to dig for them. But for five years the U.S. government has refused to work with North Korea to recover the men of Unsan and others among more than 8,000 U.S. missing in action from the 1950 to 1953 war.

Now, under pressure from MIA family groups, the Obama administration is said to be moving slowly to reverse the Bush administration’s suspension of the joint recovery program, a step taken in 2005 as the North Korean nuclear crisis dragged on.
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Lost Korean War battalion awaits MIA decision

Lab works to solve Korean War MIA mysteries

Lab works to solve Korean War MIA mysteries

By William Cole - Honolulu Advertiser via Gannett News Service
Posted : Tuesday Dec 29, 2009 7:03:15 EST

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii — The mottled brown skull and other remains — a lower jaw with eight teeth and a pair of fillings, seven right side ribs, part of a pelvis and some arm and leg bones — showed evidence of dirt and looked like they were buried at one time.

It’s up to forensic anthropologists like Gregory Berg to build from the ground up the U.S. service member who died in North Korea more than half a century ago.

There are plenty of challenges to doing so faced by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, but there’s been a big advance relating to Korean War fallen, and a new Pentagon impetus to speed up all identifications.

In September, the Hawaii-based accounting command, charged with investigating, recovering and identifying missing U.S. war dead, opened a new lab at Pearl Harbor devoted to identifying Korean War remains. About 8,100 Americans remain missing from the Korean War.
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Lab works to solve Korean War MIA mysteries

Sgt. Charles “Leo” Wilson, Korean War MIA remains found

Soldier’s remains ID’d six decades later

The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Jul 31, 2009 20:50:52 EDT

AVA, Mo. — The remains of a Missouri soldier who died in the Korean War are being returned to his family.

Defense Department officials say a North Korean farmer found the remains of Sgt. Charles “Leo” Wilson in 2000. Wilson is believed to have been killed in late November 1950.

Officials at Fort Leonard Wood said Friday that Wilson’s remains are being returned to his family in the southern Missouri town of Ava.

Memorial services and a funeral will be held the afternoon of Aug. 8.
Soldier remains ID six decades later