Remains of Korean War Army soldier ID’d as western Indiana man

WASHINGTON (WISH) — The Defense Department on Tuesday said it’s identified a central Indiana man killed during the Korean War.

Army Sgt. 1st Class James A. Coleman, 22, was from Hillsdale, Indiana. That’s a small, rural community in Vermillion County, about a 95-minute drive west of Indianapolis near the Illinois border.

Coleman was reported missing in action on April 25, 1951, during fighting against Chinese Communist Forces near the Hwach-on Reservoir in the modern-day Republic of Korea, the Defense Department says. Coleman’s status was changed to killed in action on Oct. 3, 1952, based on eyewitness accounts from a soldier in a neighboring foxhole. His body was unable to be recovered due to the fighting.

Coleman was a member of Company I, 3rd Battalion, 19th Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division.

Coleman’s remains could not immediately be identified after they were recovered May 18, 1953. They initially were buried in the United Nations Military Cemetery Tanggok, today known as the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Busan, South Korea.

“After the end of fighting in 1953, unknown remains from the Korean peninsula were transferred to the Central Identification Unit Kokura in Japan,” said a news release from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. “All 848 unidentified sets of remains were sent to Hawaii in 1956 where they were buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu.”

Coleman’s remains were disinterred in January 2019 as part of a plan to identify 652 of the Korean War unknown soldiers. A lab used DNA and medical records to identify Coleman’s remains.

Coleman will be buried Oct. 19 at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

Coleman’s personnel profile can be viewed at online.

This article and headline were corrected to indicate Vermillion County is in west central Indiana.