Marine Missing From Korean War is
Identified
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The Department of Defense
POW/Missing Personnel Office announced today that
the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action
from the Korean War, have been identified and will
be returned to his family for burial with full
military honors.
He is Pfc. Donald M. Walker, U.S. Marine Corps,
of Springfield, Ky. He will be buried Dec. 7 in
Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C.
Walker was assigned to the Service Company, 1st
Service Battalion, of the 1st Marine
Division deployed near the Chosin Reservoir in North
Korea. On Nov. 27, 1950, three Communist Chinese
divisions launched an attack on the Marine
positions. Over the next several days, U.S. forces
staged a fighting withdrawal to the south, first to
Hagaru-ri, then Koto-ri, and eventually to defensive
positions at Hungnam. Walker died on Dec. 7, 1950,
as a result of enemy action near Koto-ri. He was
buried by fellow Marines in a temporary United
Nations military cemetery in Hungnam, which fell to
the North Koreans in December 1950. His identity was
later verified from a fingerprint taken at the time
of the burial.
During Operation Glory in 1954, the North Korean
government repatriated the remains of 2,944 U.S.
soldiers and Marines. Included in this repatriation
were remains associated with Walker's burial. The
staff at the U.S. Army Mortuary in Kokura, Japan,
however, cited suspected discrepancies between the
biological profile from the remains and Walker's
physical characteristics. The remains were among 416
from Operation Glory subsequently buried as
"unknowns" in the National Memorial Cemetery of the
Pacific (The Punchbowl) in Hawaii.
In April 2007, the
Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command exhumed remains
from The Punchbowl believed to be those of
Walker. Although the remains did not yield
usable DNA data, a reevaluation of the skeletal
and dental remains led to Walker's
identification.
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