Sprague, Oscar L.
Army Private 1st Class

Oscar L. Sprague, age 25, from Washington County Millinocket, Maine .

Parents: Clifford Sprague

Service era: Korea

Date of death: Sunday, September 3, 1950
Death details: On April 23, 2025, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency identified the remains of Cpl. Oscar L. Sprague, missing from the Korean War. Sprague entered the U.S. Army from Maine and was a member of H Company of the 2nd Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division. On August 31, 1950, the North Korean People’s Army engaged in a large-scale offensive against the U.S. defensive line in South Korea. The defensive position, known as the Pusan Perimeter, was intended to prevent NKPA forces from reaching the harbor in Pusan, South Korea, where American reinforcements would arrive. On Sept. 3, members of Sprague’s 9th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, organized near Yongsan, South Korea, and counterattacked the NKPA forces. By Sept. 5, with the help of air and artillery support, the U.S. counteroffensive succeeded in pushing the enemy back across the Naktong River. Sprague was among a group of about seventy men who were ambushed by NKPA forces while trying to move into position for the Sept. 3 counteroffensive. These men became cut off from their allies and were forced into a defensive perimeter atop a small hill near Yongsan. They held their lines for three days, despite nearly incessant enemy attempts to dislodge them. On Sept. 3, Sprague went missing during fighting on the hill. Survivors of the incident testified that Sprague’s actions contributed greatly to the sturdy defense of the perimeter. He was never seen alive in enemy custody as a prisoner of war, and searches of the Yongsan area following the end of hostilities were unsuccessful in locating his remains. In 1951, the 565th Graves Registration Company had recovered a set of remains from a shallow grave near the Naktong Bulge region of the Pusan Perimeter. The remains could not be positively identified at the time and on Feb. 14, 1956, were transferred and interred as Unknown X-1984 in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu. In July of 2018, the DPAA proposed a plan to disinter 652 Korean War Unknowns from the Punchbowl, and on Oct. 7, 2019, as part of this effort, DPAA personnel disinterred Unknown X-1984 and sent the remains to the DPAA laboratory for scientific analysis. Based on the laboratory analysis and total circumstantial evidence, the previously unidentified remains were found to be those of Sprague. 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, DC, which was updated in 2022 to include the names of the fallen.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Morning Sentinel (1954)