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A Wall of Remembrance (pictured above) was unveiled Wednesday at the Korean War Memorial with\u00a0 more than 43,700 names inscribed on it.<\/p>\n
Unlike any other US war memorial, the names of over 7,000 Koreans are also inscribed on the Army section of the Wall. Their names are mixed with our troops, as is fitting: The Korean Augmentation to US Army (KATUSA) lived with our troops, fought with our troops, and died with our troops. Now their names are mixed, as they fought, and are honored with our troops.<\/p>\n
Gold Star families pressed forward Tuesday to find their loved ones’ names listed on the new Wall of Remembrance added to the Korean War Veterans Memorial, just as families of the fallen from Vietnam did 40 years ago at the opening of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.<\/p>\n
But there were major differences in how the names were arranged and who was listed between the Korea and Vietnam memorials, said retired Army<\/a> Gen. John Tilelli, chairman of the Korean War Veterans Memorial Foundation.<\/p>\n
“It’s the only one [memorial] with foreign names on it,” Tilelli told Military.com on a brief walk Tuesday afternoon around the circular Wall of Remembrance. That wall lists the names of more than 36,600 U.S. troops who lost their lives in the Korea conflict, along with more than 7,100 Republic of Korea (ROK) soldiers who died serving alongside them and were known as KATUSAs (Korean Augmentation To the U.S. Army).<\/p>\n
Tilelli, a two-tour Vietnam veteran and former commander of U.S. and ROK forces in South Korea, noted that Korean names were mixed in with the Americans, just as they had served together. “They’re integrated, not separated,” Tilelli said of the KATUSAs, “because they fought and died with those Americans.”<\/p>\n
He also pointed out the unusual arrangement of the names — alphabetically and by rank and service branch — with privates and privates first class taking up the first 44 of the 84 Army panels. They were the youngest, and “that’s the cost of war, you’ve gotta’ understand that,” Tilelli said.<\/p>\n
“It’s these groups, these young men, who paid the ultimate price,” he said. The name panels for the other service branches list the Americans who died, but the KATUSAs served only with the Army.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n