Dorrance, James Lee
Army Sergeant

James Lee Dorrance, age 20, from Douglas County Omaha, Nebraska .

Spouse: Mariana L. Dorrance

Service era: Korea

Date of death: Saturday, March 17, 1951
Death details: On May 22, 2023, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of Sergeant First Class James Lee Dorrance, missing from the Korean War. Sergeant First Class Dorrance entered the U.S. Army from Nebraska and served in B Battery, 82nd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division. By mid-November 1950, U.S. and Allied forces had advanced to within approximately sixty miles of the Yalu River, the border between North Korea and China. On November 25, approximately 300,000 Chinese Communist Forces (CCF) “volunteers” suddenly and fiercely counterattacked after crossing the Yalu. The 2nd Infantry Division, located the farthest north of units at the Chongchon River, could not halt the CCF advance and was ordered to withdraw to defensive positions at Sunchon in the South Pyongan province of North Korea. As the division pulled back from Kunu-ri toward Sunchon, it conducted an intense rearguard action while fighting to break through well-defended roadblocks set up by CCF infiltrators. The withdrawal was not complete until December 1, and the 2nd Infantry Division suffered extremely heavy casualties in the process. SFC Dorrance was captured during the fighting around Kunu-ri on December 1 and taken to Prisoner of War Camp 5 in Pyoktong, North Korea. Returning American POWs reported that he died there of March 17, 1951. During Operation GLORY, the postwar exchange of war dead, 495 sets of remains from burial grounds around POW Camp 5 were returned to United Nations Command. All but 38 were identified. Those remains were buried as Unknowns at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. In August 2019, as part of a planned exhumation of Project GLORY burials originating from Camp 5, one set of remains was disinterred and sent to a DPAA laboratory for further study. The laboratory analysis and the totality of the circumstantial evidence available established the remains as those of SFC Dorrance.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Associated Press (1954)