The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, killed in action during the Korean War, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors.
Army Sgt. Stanley W. Bear, 19, of Greenup, Ky., will be buried Nov. 10, in Grayson, Ky. On Sept. 4, 1950, Bear and his unit, F Company, 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division, battled enemy forces near Haman, South Korea. After the battle, Bear was reported as missing in action.
In 1951, Korean National Police recovered remains associated with the battle and turned them over to U.S. officials. The U.S. Army was unable to identify Bear’s remains at the time, and he was buried as “unknown” in the U.N. Cemetery at Tanggok, South Korea. Later that year, the
U.S. consolidated cemeteries on the peninsula and the remains were sent to the U.S. Army’s Central Identification Unit in Kokura, Japan, to determine whether they could be identified. When scientific analysis determined an identification wasn’t possible, Bear’s remains were transferred to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii and re-interred as “unknown.”
In 2011, due to advances in identification technology, analysts from DPMO and Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) reevaluated the information associated with the remains interred in Hawaii and concluded that they could likely be identified. The remains were exhumed and scientists from JPAC successfully identified Bear using circumstantial evidence and forensic identification tools such as radiograph comparison and dental records.
For additional information on the Defense Department’s mission to account for missing Americans, visit the DPMO web site at http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo or call (703) 699-1169.
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