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The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced
today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing from the Korean
War, has been identified and returned to his family for burial with
full military honors.
He is Cpl. Clarence R. Becker, U.S. Army, of Lancaster, Pa. He was
buried April 25 in Indiantown Gap, Pa.
Representatives
from the Army met with Becker’s next-of-kin to explain the recovery and
identification process and to coordinate interment with military honors
on behalf of the secretary of the Army.
On Dec. 1, 1950, Becker went missing in action when the convoy of
trucks in which he was riding was ambushed south of Kunuri, North
Korea. He was captured and taken prisoner. U.S. servicemen
who were held in captivity with Becker said he died in the North Korean
Pyoktong POW Camp 5 around May 1951 from malnutrition and
disease. He was buried near the camp.
Following the Armistice, the Chinese Army exhumed remains from several
POW camp cemeteries and repatriated them in 1954 to the United Nations
forces during Operation Glory. Becker’s remains could not be
identified at the time and were subsequently buried as unknown remains
at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific—the Punch Bowl—in
Hawaii.
In 2005, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) reexamined Korean
War-era documents relating to unknowns buried at the Punch Bowl, which
suggested that some of these remains might be identifiable. Later
that year, JPAC exhumed a grave there believed to be associated with
Becker.
Among other traditional forensic identification tools and
circumstantial evidence, scientists from the JPAC also used dental
comparisons in Beckers identification.
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