Clarence Robert Becker, age 19, from Lancaster County Lancaster, Pennsylvania .
Service era: Korea
Date of death: Sunday, May 20, 1951
Death details: On October 24, 2006, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC, now DPAA) identified the remains of Corporal Clarence Robert Becker, missing from the Korean War. Corporal Becker joined the U.S. Army from Pennsylvania and was a member of Headquarters Company, 9th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division. On December 1, 1950, he was captured by enemy forces when the convoy of trucks in which he was riding was ambushed south of Kunu-ri, North Korea. He was taken to Camp 5 in Pyoktong, North Korea, where he died of malnutrition and disease. CPL Becker’s remains were returned to U.S. custody in 1954; however, they could not be identified at the time and were buried as unknowns at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii. In 2005, advances in forensic techniques prompted the reexamination and identification of CPL Becker’s remains. Corporal Becker 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.
Cemetery: Indiantown Gap National
Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Associated Press (2007)