Pentagon plans to exhume, identify Korean War remains in Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

The Defense Department plans to exhume and identify the remains of the Korean War service member buried in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.

The disinterment is expected to cap a years-long effort by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency to identify the remains of almost 900 unidentified service members killed during the Korean War who were laid to rest in graves of the unknown in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

Kelly McKeague, the director of DPAA, which is tasked with locating and identifying the nation’s war dead, said during a Sept. 1 webinar that the decision to exhume the Arlington crypt comes as a result of advances in DNA science.

“We will petition Arlington National Cemetery to disinter the remains at the Tomb of the Unknown simply because the probability is high that we will be able to identify that unknown,” he said.

The agency possesses DNA samples from family members of 94% of the roughly 7,400 American service members still missing from the Korean War, McKeague said.

The DNA advances have given DPAA the capacity to use genetic samples from family members who are up to four generations removed from the deceased service member, he said.

DPAA will file a petition for disinterment with the U.S. Army because it oversees Arlington, agency spokesman Sean Everette said in an email Tuesday.

However, Everette said that the process at Arlington would not begin until all Korean War unknowns are exhumed in the Honolulu cemetery, which is administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

There are fewer than 50 Korean War unknowns remaining to be disinterred, Lance Pridemore, assistant director at the cemetery, said in an email Tuesday. He said the cemetery expects to complete those exhumations by the end of November.

Remains are handed over to DPAA during dignified transfer ceremonies, Pridemore said.

In 1956, Congress directed that remains from an unknown American who died in the Korean War be buried near the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which then held only remains of an unknown from World War I.

In 1958, the remains from a grave of a Korean War unknown at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific were transferred to Washington, D.C.

The remains then lay in state in the Capitol, along with those of an unknown service member from World War II, before both were taken by caisson to Arlington for funeral services led by President Dwight Eisenhower.

There is precedent for exhuming and identifying a service member entombed in the Arlington memorial.

The remains of the unknown service member from the Vietnam War, entombed in 1984, were exhumed in 1998 and identified as Air Force 1st Lt. Michael Blassie. He was reburied at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis County, Mo.

The crypt at Arlington remains empty and now bears the inscription, “Honoring and Keeping Faith with America’s Missing Servicemen.”