Officials announced Thursday that the remains of an 18-year-old Army corporal from Detroit who was killed in the Korean War in 1950 had been identified. Cpl. Lewis W. Hill was accounted for on May 22 by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency after agency scientists identified his remains using dental and anthropological study, among other methods.
Hill went missing in action on July 20, 1950, after his unit was ordered to evacuate from Taejon, South Korea, and his body was never found, according to the agency. According to the agency, the Army issued a presumptive conclusion of death more than three years later, on December 31, 1953.
The Army began retrieving bodies from the region and temporarily interring them at a United Nations military cemetery after reclaiming control of Taejon in the fall of 1950. A tentative link was established between Hill and a set of remains discovered at the time, but definitive proof could not be provided, and the remains were deemed unidentified, according to the agency. They were transferred to Hawaii and interred at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.
The government said that on July 15, 2019, it disinterred the bones and submitted them to its laboratory for investigation, where they were identified as Hill’s. Hill will be buried at a later date in Imlay City, Michigan, according to the agency. The Army Casualty Office received a phone message requesting information on Hill’s prospective family members.
Hill’s remains are the agency’s second set from Michigan this month. The remains of Army Air Forces Flight Officer Chester L. Rinke of Marquette, Michigan, were identified on September 8. He was killed after an aircraft crashed in India after a bombing operation on Japan during World War II.
