News-Info-Alerts

Re: Putting a Name to the Nameless

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: July 28, 2002

"Korean War effort aims to ID soldiers' remains

By CHARLES CRUMM, Of The Oakland Press May 26, 2002

William Arlo Wheeler was just 18 when he quit high school in Hazel Park and joined the U.S. Army. On Sept. 1, 1950, just a few months later, Wheeler was listed as killed in action in Korea.

Wheeler is among 8,100 soldiers whose remains have not been found or identified from the Korean War between 1950 and 1953, in which 54,000 soldiers were killed.

It's a search his brother, David Wheeler, joined a couple of years ago through the Korean War Project.

"I called the U.S. Army, and they said he may have been a prisoner," said David Wheeler, 62, of Shelby Township.

So David Wheeler got in touch with the Korean War Project, a Texas-based nonprofit organization that began a program two years ago to identify remains of soldiers recovered from Korea.

The project asks family members to contribute DNA samples that can be matched with unidentified remains already recovered or that may be recovered in the future in the hope of providing identification.

Joint efforts toward the recovery of the remains of missing soldiers began with North Korea in 1996 in concert with the POW/Missing Personnel Office of the U.S. Department of Defense. Several hundred sets of remains have been recovered since then. Some are in Hawaii.

For several years, the Department of Defense has tried to contact families of missing soldiers, but only a small percentage of families has been found for DNA samples.

Many siblings of Korean War soldiers could be in their 70s, and the DNA samples need to be from close blood relatives for accurate identification.

Wheeler is among the relatives who have been contacted, and he is participating.

He doesn't know where his brother died or where his body is.

"As far as I know, his body was never found," Wheeler said. "If he's still over in Korea, I don't want him there."

The Army lists 14 Oakland County soldiers as killed or missing in action whose remains have not been recovered. The oldest was 25; the youngest, 17.

Among them is Dewey Leiby Jr. of Davisburg, who was drafted and listed as missing in action in Korea July 6, 1953. He was 21.

Each year, his sister Dora Gram of Davisburg visits a plaque placed in the cemetery to remember her brother.

Leiby, she said, fought at a place nicknamed Porkchop Hill, part of a series of hills that seesawed back and forth between North Korean and U.S. forces during fierce fighting.

"He was a good all around neighbor boy," said Gram. "He had this feeling that he wasn't coming back and shared that with us."

Gram contributed blood for DNA samples last summer.

"It hurts when you think deeply about it, but I try not to think too deeply about it," said Gram. "I know where my bother is. He's in heaven because he's a good guy."

©The Oakland Press 2002 "