Hill, George Thomas
Army Private 1st class

George Thomas Hill, age 18, from Los Angeles County California.

Service era: Korea

Date of death: Friday, August 11, 1950
Death details: On July 9, 2025, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency identified the remains of U.S. Army Cpl. George Thomas Hill, missing from the Korean War. Hill entered the Army from California and was a member of B Company, 3rd Engineer Combat Battalion, 24th Infantry Division. On Aug. 11, 1950, he took part in a B Company reconnaissance patrol across the Naktong River to investigate North Korean forces near Chang-dong, South Korea. The patrol crossed to the west bank of the Naktong River, performed their reconnaissance, and were engaged by an enemy force of unknown strength. The patrol was still taking on heavy fire as they crossed the Naktong again to return from the mission, with only five members of the 20-person patrol ultimately made it back to friendly positions. Hill was among those who did not return. He was never reported to be a prisoner of war, and subsequent searches of the battlefield failed to recover his remains. With no evidence of his continued survival, the Army issued a presumptive finding of death as of Dec. 31, 1953. In July 2018, the DPAA proposed a plan to disinter 652 Korean War Unknowns, sets of remains recovered after the Korean War but unidentified at the time, from the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. As part of Phase Three of this plan, in July 2021 DPAA personnel disinterred two Unknowns which had been recovered from the Naktong Bulge area of the Pusan Perimeter in 1951 and sent the sets of remains to a DPAA laboratory for analysis. There it was found that portions of each set belonged to one individual who, based on the forensic analysis and total circumstantial evidence, was identified as Hill. He is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. His name is also inscribed on the Korean War Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., which was updated in 2022 to include the names of the fallen.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency