As people gathered at the Virginia War Memorial on Sept. 20 for National POW/MIA Recognition Day, Jesse Smith, exhibits director for the War Memorial, read off six names and put gold stars next to them on the memorial’s missing in action wall.
The stars represent soldiers who went missing in action whose remains were located over the past year by teams of federal forensic technicians who scour conflict zones from previous wars, analyzing DNA to locate missing American troops.
According to the memorial’s executive director, Clay Mountcastle, this represents an unusually high number of missing soldiers located. In recent years, the ceremony has often only involved one new name.
“By circumstance, a large number of Virginians were identified in the past year,” Mountcastle said.
The soldiers served in a variety of roles in Europe and the Pacific theaters in World War II and also in the Korean War. There are more than 80,000 American soldiers who are still listed as MIA; the vast majority of whom were lost in World War II. More than 1,200 of those soldiers hail from Virginia.
“It’s really a great day to be able to add six gold stars to our MIA wall and let people know that those Virginians are no longer missing,” Mountcastle said.
