BARROW COUNTY, Ga. — (Editor's note: The video above this story relates to the remains of another Georgia Korean War veteran that were returned back home earlier this year.)
More than 70 years ago, U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class James L. Wilkinson died fighting in South Korea, as U.N. forces sought to turn the tide following the surprise invasion of the South by North Korea at the outset of the Korean War.
After all that time, his remains have now been identified and the Georgia native will be given a proper burial.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) made the announcement Wednesday. They said the burial for Wilkinson - who was just 19 when he was killed in the war - will occur on Sept. 16 in Barrow County.
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According to a release from DPAA, Wilkinson was reported missing on Sept. 8, 1950 during fighting along the Naktong River near Yongson, South Korea.
At that time, the U.S. and broader U.N. coalition were trying to beat back North Korean forces that had overwhelmed the South's army with the surprise invasion earlier in the summer and nearly taken the entire Korean Peninsula. The U.S., U.N. and South Korean forces were pinned at the southern tip of Korea, in the area of what is now Busan, and their fierce defense of that small area allowed American forces to stage an ambitious amphibious landing farther north at Incheon that turned the course of the war for a time.
DPAA said Sgt. Wilkinson was a part of G Company, 2nd Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division. The 2nd Infantry Division was one of the first U.S. divisions in Korea to rally to the defense of the South.
In December 1953, the Army "issued a presumptive finding of death" for Wilkinson in the fighting more than three years prior.
Unidentified remains in Korea were interred at the United Nations Military Cemetery Tanggok beginning in 1951, and many were later sent to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, known as the Punchbowl, in Hawaii.
In March 2019, Wilkinson's remains were disinterred and eventually identified through anthropological analysis and chest radiograph comparison, DPAA said. He was officially accounted for on Dec. 5 of last year.
"Wilkinson’s name is recorded on the Courts of the Missing at the Punchbowl, along with the others who are still missing from the Korean War," DPAA said. "A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for."