Lapeer county Michigan

Lewis William Hill, age 18, from Lapeer County Michigan.

Service era: Korea

Date of death: Thursday, July 20, 1950
Death details: On May 22, 2023, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of Corporal Lewis William Hill, missing from the Korean War. Corporal Hill entered the U.S. Army from Michigan and was a member of L Company, 3rd Battalion, 34th Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division. He was reported missing in action on July 20, 1950, when U.S. troops were ordered to fall back through Taejon, South Korea, after enemy troops broke through their defensive line northeast of the city. The withdrawal of U.S. forces from the city was hampered by roadblocks, and to avoid capture soldiers moved off-road and began filtering through the countryside in small groups. Due to the fighting, CPL Hill’s unit was not able to search for him, and there was never any evidence he was a prisoner of war. In 1953, the Department of the Army issued a presumptive finding of death for CPL Hill. After regaining control of Taejon in the fall of 1950, the Army began recovering remains from the area and temporarily interring them at the United Nations Military Cemetery in Taejon. Remains that could not be definitively identified were sent to Hawaii where they were buried as Unknowns at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu. In July 2018 the DPAA proposed a plan to disinter 652 Korean War Unknowns from the Punchbowl. As part of Phase Two of this Korean War Disinterment Project, one set of unidentified remains was sent to the DPAA laboratory for further study. The laboratory analysis and the totality of the circumstantial evidence available established the remains as those of CPL Hill. Corporal Hill 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