Washington –
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced today that U.S. Army Pvt. 1st Class Bryan Myers Jr., 21, of Cobden, Illinois, killed during the Korean War, was accounted for February 27, 2024.
In Sept. 1950, Myers was a member of Company H, 2nd Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division, during the Korean War. He was killed in action while his unit was defending the Pusan Perimeter, in South Korea. The exact circumstances of his death were unknown, and his remains were not accounted for during or after the war.
In 1950, the remains of an American soldier were recovered from a foxhole on the east side of Mt. Chulmol, near Haman, South Korea. Investigators estimated the death to have occurred in early September but were unable to make a positive identification. The remains, designated as Unknown X173 Masan, were initially interred in the United Nations Military Cemetery Masan, before ultimately being transferred to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (Punchbowl), in Honolulu, Hawaii.
In March 2019, scientists from the DPAA laboratory exhumed Unknown X-173 from the Punchbowl for scientific analysis.
To identify Myers’ remains, scientists from DPAA used chest radiograph and other circumstantial evidence. Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis.
Pfc Myers’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.
Pfc Myers will be buried in Elwood, Illinois, on a date to be determined.
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.
Myers’s personnel profile can be viewed at https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaProfile?id=a0Jt0000015RUdAEAW.