Soldier Accounted For From Korean War (Yanez, F.)

WASHINGTON  –   The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced today that U.S. Army Pvt. Felix M. Yanez, 19, of Douglas, Arizona, who was killed during the Korean War, was accounted for July 13, 2022.

In July 1950, Yanez was a member of Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 19th Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division. He was killed in action fighting the North Korean People’s Army along the Kum River, north of Taejon, South Korea, on July 16, 1950. Due to the fighting, his body could not be recovered at that time.

A set of remains was recovered south of Tuman-ni, South Korea, in March 1951. They could not be identified, were designated X-789 Tanggok, and buried in the United Nations Cemetery Tanggok later that month. In August 1951, the Central Identification Unit Kokura in Japan began a reexamination of X-789. They made several attempts between then and August 1954 before ultimately declaring the remains unidentifiable. All 848 unidentified sets of Korean War remains at CIU-Kokura were sent to Hawaii in 1956 where they were buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu.

In July 2018, the DPAA proposed a plan to disinter 652 Korean War Unknowns from the Punchbowl. In August 2019, DPAA disinterred Unknown X-789 as part of Phase Two of the Korean War Disinterment Project and sent the remains to the DPAA laboratory at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, for analysis.

To identify Yanez’s remains, scientists from DPAA used dental and anthropological analysis, as well as chest radiograph comparison and circumstantial evidence. Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis.

Yanez’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. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.

Yanez will be buried Sept. 3, 2022, in Tucson, Arizona.

For family and funeral information, contact the Army Casualty Office at (800) 892-2490.

To see the most up-to-date statistics on DPAA recovery efforts for those unaccounted for from the Korean War, go to the Korean War Accounting page on the DPAA website at: https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaFamWebKorean.

For additional information on the Defense Department’s mission to account for Americans who went missing while serving our country, visit the DPAA website at www.dpaa.mil, find us on social media at www.facebook.com/dodpaa or https://www.linkedin.com/company/defense-pow-mia-accounting-agency.

Yanez’s personnel profile can be viewed at https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaProfile?id=a0Jt0000004OWTkEAO.