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thedrifter
05-21-03, 07:24 PM
FIRST KOREAN WAR UNKNOWN IDENTIFIED

The remains of a Korean War U.S. Marine buried as an "unknown"
have been identified and returned to his family. He is Pfc.
Ronald D. Lilledahl of Minneapolis, Minn. This marks the first
unknown serviceman from the Korean War to be identified.

On Nov. 28, 1950, Lilledahl's unit, Company C of the 7th
Marines, was surrounded by Chinese forces on the west side of
the Chosin Reservoir and cut off from supporting units. During
a seesaw battle throughout the day, Lilledahl reportedly was
struck and killed by enemy fire and buried in a shallow grave.
In the ensuing withdrawal, C Company was unable to retrieve all
of its dead, including Lilledahl.

Following the armistice, the North Korean government returned
remains believed to be those of U.S. servicemen, but forensic
technology at the time was unable to make positive
identifications on more than 800 of those. They were interred
in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, known as The
Punchbowl, as "unknowns."

In 1999, the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii
(CILHI) exhumed two of the Korean War unknowns for the purpose
of possible identification. Between 1999 and 2002, CILHI
scientists submitted 10 bone or dental samples to the Armed
Forces DNA Identification Laboratory but no usable mitochondrial
DNA data could be extracted from the remains.

Broadening their search effort, CILHI researchers uncovered a
postage-stamp sized chest x-ray in Lilledahl's medical records
at the National Personnel Records Center. The scientific staff
enlarged it many times and was able to show very strong
consistency with the remains. The final piece of evidence
confirming his identity came from a new computer program
recently developed by CILHI, which allows scientists to compare
dental remains to a vast database of almost 40,000 dental
patterns seen in the U.S. Lilledahl's were unique among the
entire database, lending tremendous weight to the significance
of the match.

Annual negotiations led by the Defense POW/Missing Personnel
Office since 1996 have enabled CILHI teams to conduct 25
operations in North Korea, recovering what may be 178 remains of
Americans. More than 8,100 are still missing in action from the
Korean War.


Sempers,

Roger