Moore, James Richard
Army Private 1st class

James Richard Moore, age 19, from Shawnee County Topeka, Kansas .

Parents: Dorothy S. Moore

Service era: Korea

Date of death: Friday, October 20, 1950
Death details: By July 1950, the North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) had taken control of Taejon, and the U.S. Eighth Army’s 25th Infantry Division and 1st Cavalry Division were sent into action. The 1st Cavalry Division deployed at Pohang between July 18-21 and immediately advanced west on the Taegu-Taejon road to establish blocking positions at Yongdong and defend the city. The ensuing three-day Battle of Yongdong was intense, and the 1st Cavalry Division was ultimately forced to withdraw on July 25 after the 5th Cavalry Regiment alone had lost 275 men. The battle inflicted heavy casualties on the NKPA and delayed its advance enough to allow United Nations (UN) forces to establish the Pusan Perimeter, but the NKPA still managed to capture many American prisoners of war (POWs). Prisoners were marched north to Seoul before being transferred to camps in Pyongyang. Many POWs were eventually rescued, though many others died from exhaustion and mistreatment. Poor record keeping by the NKPA and strained diplomatic tensions following the war have complicated the identification and recovery of those who went missing during the Battle of Yongdong, and many are still unaccounted for. Private First Class James Richard Moore entered the U.S. Army from Kansas and served in F Company of the 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division. On July 25, 1950, F Company was south of Yongdong, attempting to rescue units that had been separated from the American positions in the city. Soldiers in F Company faced fierce enemy resistance, and in the confusing fighting, many became separated from the unit and were taken prisoner by the NKPA. Private First Class Moore was captured and subsequently marched to the Moo Hah Girls’ School in Seoul, where he and other prisoners of war wrote their names on the blackboards as an unofficial POW roster. Private First Class Moore’s name appears again on a school’s blackboard, near Pyongyang, among a group of POWs who continued northward toward Manpo. Eventually, NKPA soldiers began murdering POWs as American forces moved north into North Korea. Private First Class Moore was killed along with other POWs on October 20, 1950, near the Sunchon Railroad Tunnel. His remains were recovered by advancing friendly forces and buried in a temporary cemetery near Pyongyang, and following the armistice, many remains from this cemetery were returned to the U.S. and the families of the deceased. However, not all the remains were returned, and PFC Moore’s were not identified among those that were. It is unclear whether he is still interned near Pyongyang or if he was buried as Unknown at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. Today, Private First Class Moore 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, Evening Eagle (1951)