Welcome home, Army Pfc. James L. Constant

| May 27, 2013

salute for James Constance

You probably read Hondo’s post about Army Pfc. James L. Constant coming home from Korea nearly 63 years after he was killed in the war there. The Indy Star reports that he was buried this Memorial Day weekend near Indianapolis after a long, slow journey;

constant_james

He died at age 19 on Sept. 8, 1950, during a fierce battle in what is now South Korea. His body was soon recovered, but couldn’t be identified. He was buried and transferred to several places abroad and in Hawaii, where other unidentified Korean War casualties are buried, before a successful identification was made last year, primarily through dental records.

The Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office tells the longer story about his trip home;

Army Pfc. James L. Constant, 19, of Beach Grove, Ind., will be buried May 25, in Indianapolis, Ind. In late 1950, Constant and elements of 2nd Infantry Division (ID) were defending the Naktong Bulge, near Changnyong, South Korea, when they were attacked by enemy forces. As a result of the battle, Constant and many other service members were reported missing.

In September 1950, the U.S. Army Graves Registration Service (AGRS) recovered the remains of a U.S. serviceman from a battlefield near Changnyong, South Korea. The remains were buried in a local 24th ID cemetery in Miryang, South Korea and were later transferred to the United Nations Cemetery in Tanggok. Several months later, the remains were disinterred and transferred to the U.S. Army’s Central Identification Unit in Kokura, Japan for laboratory analysis.

In April 1955 a military review board declared the remains unidentifiable. The unidentified remains were transferred to Hawaii, where they were interred at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also known as the “Punchbowl.”

In 2012, analysts from JPAC reevaluated Constant’s records and determined that, due to the advances in technology, the remains recovered from the area near Changnyong should be exhumed for identification.

The Indy Star says that his surviving sisters, Betty Kelley, Margaret Rigdon and a nephew were present at the final ceremony to receive the flag from his coffin;

Pat Lewis and husband Donald, a Korean War veteran, came to show their respect Saturday.

“It’s a sad day, but it’s a happy day to be able to have him back,” she said. “I can’t imagine waiting all those years to bring him home.”

And we always bring them home.

Category: No Longer Missing

7 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Hondo

To reiterate: if any of you have relatives missing from World War II, from Korea, or from SEA, please read this link to see if you qualify to submit a mtDNA sample – and if you qualify, please do so. By doing so, you may be able to help identify a fallen US service member from one of those conflicts who hasn’t yet come home.

Everyone deserves a proper burial – at home.

Sam Naomi

Jonn & Honda
Right now I can’t find the right words to say thanks for having Pfc. Korean Veteran James L. Constant report ” Welcome Home Army Pfc. James L. Constant posted on our TAH web site. I know there’s many more Korean Veterans that are stll unfound and we need to get each and everyone one of them home, and it’s days like today that makes us all feel that we have’nt done enough to bring these fellow veterans home, but you can be well a’sure that we will never give up. My sincere thanks goes out to each and everyone of you guys here on TAH, in my book you guys are the best. Thanks Honda & Jonn
Sam (Where the tall corn grows)

Green Thumb

Sleep well, brother.

A Proud Infidel

Welcome Home, Fallen Warrior.

streetsweeper

Welcome home, brother. RIP!

Sparks

Thank you Pfc. James L. Constant. Rest In God’s Peace and loving arms. Welcome home. We here will never forget you and the many like you we still do not know. God bless your family.

SgtBob

Not to be snarky, but the Indianapolis writer should check history and a map. “He died at age 19 on Sept. 8, 1950, during a fierce battle in what is now South Korea.” I think the Naktong area has always been in “South Korea.”

Welcome home, Pfc. Constant.