Garcia, Cresenciano Jr.
Army Corporal

Cresenciano Jr. Garcia, age 19, from Webb County Texas.

Service era: Korea

Date of death: Wednesday, February 28, 1951
Death details: On April 25, 2023, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of Sergeant Cresenciano Garcia Jr., missing from the Korean War. Sergeant Garcia entered the U.S. Army from Texas and was a member of Headquarters Company, 9th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division. On December 1, 1950, he was reported missing in action after a battle against the Chinese People’s Volunteer Forces (CPVF) in the vicinity of Sinjang, North Korea. Based on later reports from returning American POWs, SGT Garcia was captured and taken to POW Camp 5, Pyoktong, North Korea, where he died on or around February 28, 1951. However, his remains were not immediately recovered following the war. 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 SGT Garcia. Sergeant Garcia 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, Austin American (1954)