Tomaszewski, Warclaw Anthony
Army 1st lieutenant

Warclaw Anthony Tomaszewski from Wayne County Michigan.

Service era: Korea

Date of death: Tuesday, January 2, 1951
Death details: Members of the U.S. 34th Infantry Regiment were among the first U.S. ground troops to arrive in South Korea following the North Korean Peoples Army (NKPA) invasion on June 25, 1950. The 34th, which had been on garrison duty in Japan, was undermanned and under-equipped and had little field experience. It’s mission was to delay the NKPA’s surge to the south as long as possible so that reinforcements could arrive. On July 6 the NKPA attacked the 1st and 3rd Battalions of the 34th Infantry north of the town of Chonan, South Korea. The U.S. troops withdrew slowly back to Chonan, and established defensive lines there. First Lieutenant Waclaw Anthony Tomaszewski entered the U.S. Army from Michigan and served with Headquarters Company, 3rd Battalion, 34th Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division. He was captured by enemy forces near Suwon, South Korea, on July 7, 1950, and was marched north to the Apex Prisoner of War (POW) Camps near the Yalu River in North Korea. Repatriated American POWs later reported that 1LT Tomaszewski died of malnutrition while still in captivity on or about January 2, 1951. His remains were not identified among those returned to U.S. custody after the war, and he is still unaccounted-for. Today, First Lieutenant Tomaszewski 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