SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The remains of a Korean War soldier were flown back to the San Francisco Bay Area more than six decades after he went missing in South Korea. ADVERTISING SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The remains of a
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The remains of a Korean War soldier were flown back to the San Francisco Bay Area more than six decades after he went missing in South Korea.
U.S. Army Cpl. Robert Graham disappeared after Chinese forces attacked his combat battalion in February 1951. He was captured and starved to death in a North Korean camp. He was 20 years old.
“Things are finally coming to closure for the family … after 65 years,” said James George, 59, a retired U.S. Marine Corps master sergeant who escorted his uncle’s remains on a flight from Hawaii to San Francisco International Airport on Wednesday.
Wearing his military uniform, he watched as six servicemen carried the flag-wrapped casket from the airplane to a waiting hearse.
George and two other relatives contributed DNA that enabled the Army to identify a single bone from Graham’s leg last fall. The bone was among body parts of missing U.S. servicemen North Korea turned over in 1993. Recent advances in genetic testing allowed officials to make the ID.
The remains were shipped to a Defense Department lab in Hawaii that was to account for all Americans detained as prisoners or missing in action in Korea, Vietnam and other U.S. wars.
There were delays, but last year the Pentagon reorganized the program and transferred its management to Washington, D.C.
A military funeral is scheduled for today in Colma, Calif.
