Leonard, James Joseph Jr.
Army Private 1st class

James Joseph Jr. Leonard, age 32, from San Francisco County San Francisco, California .

Service era: Korea

Date of death: Tuesday, July 25, 1950
Death details: On August 7, 2017, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of Private First Class James Joseph Leonard Jr., missing from the Korean War. Private First Class Leonard joined the U.S. Army from California and was a member of Company E, 2nd Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division. He was killed in action during a North Korean attack against his unit’s position near Yongdong, South Korea, on July 25, 1950. PFC Leonard’s remains were not recovered in investigations of the area, and he was not identified among remains returned to U.S. custody immediately after the war. In 2017, a local construction crew uncovered human remains near Yongdong, and a South Korean recovery team retrieved the remains; subsequent analysis by DPAA led to the identification of the remains as those of PFC Leonard. Private First Class Leonard 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, Associated Press (1950)