Category: We Remember

USAF Retired sends us a link to the news that Army Major Stephen Uurtamo of Headquarters Battery, 82nd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division is coming home finally after being held as a prisoner of the Chinese Army since late 1950. His 76-year-old daughter, Carol Elkin, will be there to say ‘goodbye’;

For the Uurtamo family, the service is the final chapter of a story that began in late 1950 when the 32-year-old career soldier was declared missing in action after fierce fighting in one of the bloodiest battles of the war near the Ch’ongch’on River in North Korea.

He was declared dead after several returning U.S. prisoners of war reported that Uurtamo had been captured and died at a war transient camp where prisoners who survived came home with stories of watching their buddies starve to death.

“He died from malnutrition and pneumonia,” Elkin said.

The whereabouts of his body remained a mystery for decades. Then, in 2005, a joint U.S. and North Korean military recovery team recovered 32 sets of remains from a burial site. About eight years after that, Elkin went to a Chicago hotel for one of the events the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency holds around the country in which people like her are updated about their missing loved ones and given a chance to provide DNA samples for comparison with DNA pulled from recovered remains.

Hondo told us that his remains had been identified last year.

On Friday afternoon, forever young Second Lieutenant Robert Keown came home to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. His earthly remains were recovered from a mountainside in Papua New Guinea where his P-38 aircraft crashed after a mission in 1944.

His nieces and nephews were on hand for his welcome home according to the Associated Press;

Relatives never knew what happened to him until November. That’s when genetic testing confirmed that remains found years ago on the island were his.

Keown was buried Friday with full honors.

Nieces and nephews are the closest remaining relatives to attend the funeral of Keown, who grew up near Atlanta in Lawrenceville, Georgia, before moving to Scottsboro, Alabama.

His father died in 1937 and his mother in 1979. Keown’s two brothers also died while he was missing, the most recent in 2015.

Mick sends us the sad news that Samuel Tom Holiday, a Navajo Code Talker veteran of the Second World War passed at the age of 94 in southern Utah on Monday. He was surrounded by his loving family during his final moments in this life according to Stars & Stripes;

He was 19 when he joined the Marine Corps and became a part of operations in several locations across the Pacific during the war, according to The Spectrum. A mortar explosion left him with hearing loss, but he would later tell family that he always felt safe during battle because of a pouch around his neck holding sacred stones and yellow corn pollen…After the war, Holiday returned to the Navajo reservation and worked as a police officer, a ranger and later started his own equipment company. He married Lupita Mae Isaac and had eight children.

Samuel Tom Holiday will be interred in Kayenta, Arizona with his wife.

It is believed that only 10 Navajo code talkers remain with us.

According to the Washington Post, among some of the points of yesterday’s summit between President Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un was a commitment to recover the more than 5000 remains of US troops missing since the war.

The Post reports that the inclusion of the issue in the agreement was a victory for Veterans’ Service Organizations which have lobbied the President.

In recent days, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told his negotiating team, led by U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines Sung Kim, that the POW issue was important to Trump, and he “instructed Kim to negotiate for it,” said State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert. Trump, during a news conference on Tuesday, said that he had received “countless” phone calls from Americans asking for help on the issue.

“So many people, during the campaign, would say is there any way you can work with North Korea to get the remains of my son back or father back,” Trump said. “I said we don’t get along too well with that particular group of people. Now we do. And he agreed to that so quickly and nicely. It was a nice thing.”

As Trump headed into his landmark meeting with Kim Jong earlier in the day, a top Defense Department official told families of the missing soldiers that securing the remains and resuming recovery efforts is a top priority for negotiations.

US-North Korean teams repatriated 229 sets of US remains between 1990 and 2005 when relations between the countries deteriorated.

On Monday, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which has for years promoted recovery efforts for fallen soldiers, sent a letter to Trump, Pompeo and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis urging that a repatriation agreement be on the table during the president’s negotiations with Kim.

“As the leader of the free world, we urge you to do everything in your power to ensure that those who paid the ultimate price for freedom during the Korean War are finally returned home to their families,” Keith Harman, VFW’s commander in chief, wrote. He called the return of missing soldiers’ remains an unsettled issue of “paramount importance” to the VFW and its 1.7 million members.

More than 35,000 American soldiers died on the Korean Peninsula between 1950 and 1953. The U.S. government estimates that 7,702 remain unaccounted for, with about 2,400 in South Korea.

Yet another reason for you to support the VSOs.

Bobo sends us a link to the sad news that Samuel F. Dabney has passed because of that bitch cancer at the age of 81. He created the vintage video game “Pong” and he is credited with the founding of modern video gaming.

Dabney, who went by the nickname, Ted, was born in San Francisco in 1937 and served in the Marines from 1955 to 1959. He attended the Navy’s electronics school on Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay and quickly began applying his talents as an electrical engineer.

In 1971, Dabney teamed up with Nolan Bushnell, a charismatic engineer and a colleague of Dabney’s at the time, to create the company, Atari. With just a few early employees and a bare-bones workspace, Dabney soon made a breakthrough innovation that laid the groundwork for the arcade machines still seen in bars and game rooms today.

Using pieces of plywood and fake mahogany paneling, Dabney created the first Atari console in his daughter’s bedroom.

Yesterday, we talked about Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Bannister who died days before his retirement, while he was on terminal leave. According to Stars & Stripes, the coroner has released her findings on the cause of death;

Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Bannister, 57, who was on transition leave in Lake Murray, died Sunday due to natural causes, coroner Margaret Fisher said.

Fisher added there were no suspicious circumstances or reasons to believe foul play was involved.

Stars & Stripes reports that Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Bannister has passed on just days before his planned retirement date. He had just finished a deployment to Afghanistan with the 10th Mountain Division before an assignment as as a special project officer for the Chief of Staff of the Army at Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina;

The Rome, Ga., native served in Iraq and led divisions at Ft. Carson, Colo. He commanded the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y., from 2015 until May of last year.

His death is under investigation, according to the article.

Lance Corporal Jimmy Reddington was honored by students at George Bancroft Elementary School in his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, according to Pennsylvania Homepage.

At the age of 19, Reddington was killed and his friends have now made it their mission to make sure he’s never forgotten.

Students from George Bancroft Elementary School sang patriotic songs Thursday to honor someone they’ve never met.

Long before the students were even born, Jimmy Reddington, who used to walk the same halls, was killed in action on March 23, 1967 in the Vietnam War.

“This is his dogtag. I wear it everyday,” friend Bob Worra said.

Bob Worra served with Reddington. He now lives in Florida.

The student service had him emotional.

“It was beautiful. I got a few tears, just to see the kids, it was worth the trip up from Tampa,” Worra said.

Reddington was shot and killed at the age of 19 while charging at the enemy.

His fellow Marines say he was angry because he thought his friend Joe Silvestri had been killed but he had just been knocked unconscious.

Silvestri attended Thursday’s service.

Thanks to Sonny’s Mom for the tip.