Neiswinger, Thomas William
Army Private 1st class

Thomas William Neiswinger, age 21, from Clay County Indiana.

Parents: Edward Neiswinger

Service era: Korea

Date of death: Wednesday, September 6, 1950
Death details:

On Sept. 25, 2025, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency identified the remains of U.S. Army Cpl. Thomas William Neiswinger, missing from the Korean War.

Neiswinger entered the U.S. Army from Indiana and served with F Company, 2nd Battalion, 38th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division. On Sept. 6 and 7, 1950, elements of Neiswinger’s 2nd Battalion launched attacks on a prominence called Hill 209 along the Naktong River in South Korea. After failing to secure the hill due to strong enemy resistance and in torrential rain, the U.S. troops pulled back, but not without suffering casualties. Neiswinger was among those reported missing in action on Sept. 6, 1950. Renewed efforts later brought the area under American control, but by that time, the heavy rains had been continuing for days, and the floodwaters from the Naktong River were sufficient to cover up any recent graves in the area, impeding efforts to recover the remains of fallen soldiers. In Sept. 1951, during post-war search and recovery efforts, members from the 565th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company recovered three sets of remains from a group burial near the village of An-Dong, South Korea. One of the sets of remains could not be associated with any unresolved casualty from the Korean War and was declared unidentifiable, and in 1956 was interred as a Korean War Unknown in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii. In May 2021, as part of Phase 3 of the Korean War disinterment project, DPAA personnel accessioned this Unknown to the DPAA laboratory for analysis. There, based on the laboratory analysis and total circumstantial evidence, the remains were identified as those of Neiswinger.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, The Terre Haute Tribune (1950)