Cantu, Arturo
Army Sergeant 1st class

Arturo Cantu, age 28, from Victoria County Texas.

Service era: Korea

Date of death: Monday, January 8, 1951
Death details: 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. Master Sergeant Arturo Cantu, who joined the U.S. Army from Texas, was a member of the Medical Company, 9th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division. He was captured by the CCF during the withdrawal from the Kunu-ri area on December 1. He was taken to a holding point in the Pukchin-Tarigol Valley in North Korea, where he died of pneumonia on January 8, 1951. His remains have not been recovered, and he was not identified among the remains returned to U.S. custody after the war. Today, Master Sergeant Cantu 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