Harper, William Lee
Army Corporal
William Lee Harper, age 31, from Greenbrier County White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia .
Service era: Korea
Date of death: Monday, August 6, 1951
Death details: On Aug. 7, 2025, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency identified the remains of U.S. Army Sgt. William Lee Harper, missing from the Korean War. Harper entered the U.S. Army from West Virginia and served in Battery D, 82nd Anti-aircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division. On Feb. 5, 1951, Allied forces in Korea, including Harper’s unit launched an offensive north of Wonju, South Korea. They initially met light resistance, but on February 11, Chinese Communist Forces launched an aggressive counteroffensive that caused the Allies to withdraw. However, the Chinese Communist Forces had established a series of roadblocks on the road to the south, forcing the Allies to fight their way back to friendly lines. Harper was captured on Feb. 13, 1951, and taken to Prisoner of War Camp 1 at Changsong, North Korea. There, he died of disease and malnutrition on or around Aug. 6, 1951. In 1954, the opposing nations reached an agreement to exchange war dead known as Operation Glory. Those remains that could not be identified with the tools available at the time were interred as unknowns at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. On Feb. 10, 202, DPAA personnel exhumed one set of remains, reportedly recovered from POW Camp 1, for further study. The laboratory analysis and the totality of the circumstantial evidence available established that the remains were those of Harper.
Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, The Leader (1951)