A CLOSER LOOK: Inside identifying unknown soldiers of the Korean War

COLUMBUS, Ga. ( WRBL ) — Nearly one year after the remains of a Korean War soldier were identified and returned to his family in Georgia, the woman who made it possible visited the National Infantry Museum for the first time.

As she approached the showcase dedicated to Cpl. Luther Story , a Buena Vista native and Medal of Honor recipient who spent more than 70 years unidentified after his death at about age 19, tears welled in her eyes.

“I think some people don’t understand why we study history and this is why history matters,” Dr. Dawn Alexandrea Berry said. She continued, “I don’t think there’s anything that you can do better in your life than to give someone [their] name back.”

Berry is the chief of research for Korea at the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) Indo-Pacific Directorate based in Honolulu, Hawaii. For years, Berry and her team have been working to identify thousands of remains of U.S. soldiers from Korea. Remains can be as little as one bone from a single individual or hundreds of bones from multiple individuals.

Many of the remains which Berry’s DPAA team works with come from Operation Glory , which was part of the Korean War Armistice and repatriated nearly 870 sets of remains to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP) in Honolulu, Hawaii.

One of the 868 remains from this operation is now housed in the Tomb of the Uknown Soldier in Arlington, Va. Berry said the set of remains was selected because it was identified by researchers at that time as the least likely to be matched to a soldier.

Other remains come from K208 in the 1990s, where what was thought to be 208 sets of remains has so far been shown to include over 300 individuals. The DPAA estimates it may include up to 400.

Remains from K55 were secured from North Korea during the 2018 Singapore Summit.

To-date, there are about 81,000 missing service members from WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Cold War, as well as Iraq and other conflicts, according to the DPAA .

Berry, originally a Canadian citizen, became a U.S. citizen in order to join the agency. She was inspired by her grandfather, who escaped a Polish labor camp and joined the British army in WWII. She wanted to help keep the memory of soldiers who fought in WWII and other wars alive.

“This is one of the only countries in the world that does this for servicemembers,” Berry, trained as a historian, said. She continued, “When you study history, I think most of us want people to remember and I think this is a really palpable way to use the skills that I have to contribute to something bigger than myself.”

According to Berry, Story’s remains were difficult to identify. The remains were covered in a formaldehyde powder used for preservation in the 1950s which made DNA sequencing nearly impossible. Story was young – by some accounts he was just 16 when he enlisted in the Army, falsifying his age to serve. He also had no defining characteristics like broken bones or dental fillings.

For many years, it was near impossible to distinguish Story’s remains from those of other soldiers between the ages of 18 and 24 with similar traits. Until modern technology allowed Berry’s team to make an identification he was known only as “X-260, Tanggok.”

The team used Story’s biologic profile including age, stature, lack of dental work and DNA matching to give him his name back. They also used historical research to make the identification. Story’s remains were returned to Sumter County, Ga., in May 2023 and were buried with full military honors at Andersonville National Cemetery.

However, the reality of Berry’s work is that thousands of remains are still unidentified. Although the team never gives up on a set of remains in the hopes that future technologies may provide the ability to match them to fallen U.S. soldiers, many families go lifetimes without having the remains of their loved ones identified.

Berry said it is a little miracle every time a match occurs after decades of scientific- and historical research are used to make the identification. She emphasized her team will never stop looking for answers for remains which have not yet been matched to a soldier.

In a presentation at Columbus State University’s Frank D. Brown Hall on March 27, Berry showed eventgoers photos of soldiers her team has identified. Many of the cases were previously thought of as impossible.

Berry said, “I think for myself, the best way to motivate me is to say something’s impossible. And I feel like many of my colleagues if you say something’s impossible, we’ll find a way.”

Pvt. Delbert Holliday was identified through clavicle matching using radiographs acquired from the National Archive in St. Louis. As Berry explained, the radiographs from soldier tuberculosis intake exams were rescued from the archives 12 years ago when the DPAA was contacted by the archives ahead of recycling the documents.

“We like to joke that there’s no such thing as a historical emergency,” Berry said. “That was a historical emergency.”

The DPAA was able to coordinate the transfer of millions of radiographs and accompanying logbooks and digitize all of them. Using the documents, they were able to identify the remains of soldiers like Holliday by superimposing images of the clavicle remains and identifying points of concordance.

As Berry explained, every person has unique clavicles, much like fingerprints, which can be used for identification.

The team was also able to identify the remains of of Cpl. James Rix of Alamo, Ga.; Cpl. Stephen Nemec of Cleveland, Ohio; Pvt. Robert Sipes of Irvington, Ky.; Father Emil Kapaun of Pilsen, Kan., and more. Kapaun is currently in the process of being beatified by the Catholic church.

Berry keeps the photos of the soldiers she is working to identify on her desk at work. For years, a photo of Holliday sat on her desk and she would sing Madonna’s “Holiday” (1983) as she got ready to start her work for the day.

On the day Holliday’s remains were identified in July 2018, she sang the song again with tears of joy. She remembers holding up the photo and telling her coworkers, “It’s Delbert!”

A video about the DPAA team puts its mission this way:

“Why keep searching? The answer is simple. You never leave a fallen American behind.”

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