| For more than 50 years, the remains of Marine Private First Class John L. Ward of Utica, New York have
rested in Hawaii's National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in an unidentified grave before being
identified last year by forensic experts at the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command's laboratory at Honolulu,
Hawaii. JPAC is an organization created to track 88,000 men and women from all wars who have died in
service but whose remains have not been recovered or identified.
In the Fall of 1954, total of 1,885 American war dead were returned during Operation Glory. In January
1956, 867 American "unknowns" from that exchange, including PFC Ward, were buried in the national cemetery
also known as The Punchbowl. Last October, Ward's family was notified by JPAC that his remains had been
identified. The family plans to bury his remains at Arlington in the Spring.
PFC Ward was a member of Headquarters and Service Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine
Division, who died on Nov. 6, 1950 from shrapnel wounds during the Chosin Reservoir fighting withdrawal
after his unit was attacked by an estimated 150,000 Chinese troops, according to Marine Corps records.
Please visit the Central Identification Laboratory web site at JPAC at
http://www.jpac.pacom.mil/CIL/mtDNA.htm |
