The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency is seeking to exhume and identify the remains of the Korean War service member buried as one of the Unknowns next to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.
The reason: advances in DNA technology.
During a Sept. 1 webinar, Kelly McKeague, the director of the DPAA, told Stars and Stripes that “We will petition Arlington National Cemetery to disinter the remains at the Tomb of the Unknown simply because the probability is high that we will be able to identify that unknown,” he said.
According to McKeague, the agency now possesses DNA samples from 94% of the roughly 7,400 American service members still listed as missing from the Korean War.
While the agency plans to petition the Army, which oversees Arlington, the potential exhumation and identification process will not commence until all Korean War unknowns — currently residing in the Honolulu cemetery — are exhumed and identified.
There are fewer than 50 Korean War unknowns left, Lance Pridemore, assistant director at the cemetery, told Stripes. And that process should be complete by the end of November.
The Korean War Unknown has rested in the national cemetery since May 30, 1958, when both the Korean and WWII Unknowns were interred during ceremonies presided over by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The former five-star general and commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force during the Second World War presented the Medal of Honor to each Unknown.
The exhumation would have some precedent.
In the decade following the Vietnam War, there were calls from the American public to designate another unknown.
Known only as X-26, the remains of an American service member were being held in the U.S. Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii. Found near a stream in An Loc in 1972, X-26 had remained unidentified for over a decade when the remains were selected to represent the nation’s missing from that war and buried at Arlington on Memorial Day, 1984.
During the ceremony, President Ronald Reagan awarded the Medal of Honor to the unknown.
However, in 1994, in the face of mounting evidence that their son, Capt. Michael J. Blassie, was the Vietnam War unknown, the family of the Air Force pilot submitted a formal request to the DOD to exhume X-26’s body and submit it for DNA testing.
Of the exhumation, then-Secretary of Defense William Cohen remarked that, “We disturb this hallowed ground with profound reluctance. And we take this step only because of our abiding commitment to account for every warrior who fought and died to preserve the freedoms that we cherish.”
The remains were taken to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and the test result confirmed on June 28, 1998, that the Unknown Soldier was indeed Blassie.
Several weeks later, an MC-130E aircraft from his former unit, the 8th Special Operations Squadron, flew his remains back to his home state of Missouri. He was then re-interred at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in Saint Louis County, Missouri, according to the Society of the Honor Guard.
The marble crypt that once honored him was ultimately changed to read: Honoring and Keeping Faith with America’s Missing Servicemen, 1958–1975.
Claire Barrett is an editor and military history correspondent for Military Times. She holds a master’s degree in military history from King’s College, London, and is also a World War II researcher with an unparalleled affinity for Sir Winston Churchill and Michigan football.
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