It was May 25, 1951, when Private First-Class (Pfc) Donald McGowan, Jr., of Lawrence, was reported Missing in Action (MIA), while serving with the United States Army in Korea.
Now, 75 years later, family members still hope and seek closure for the then 19-year-old.
According to an 11-page report provided to the family on Pfc. McGowan from the Department of War, it stated, “On 25 May 1951 Pfc McGowan and his comrades from elements of the 187th Airborne were securing a bridgehead on the Soyong River as part of a larger X Corps drive towards the town of Inje. They were accompanied by two companies of tanks and faced heavy resistance from the CPVA holding the northern shore of the river. After a sharp fight, the Americans succeeded in forcing the enemy to withdraw. The infantrymen and tanks then began an aggressive advance northward trying to locate and engage additional enemy forces.”
It continued, “During the course of the day, they succeeded in finding, engaging, and defeating several CPVA units, and by the end of the day they were still engaged in fighting the CPVA. Pfc McGowan became MIA sometime during the daylong fighting on 25 May.”
According to the report, the exact details of Pfc McGowan’s loss are not clear in available records.
The report stated, “In a standard review of his status conducted on 27 November 1951, it was noted that Cpl Greenwood’s Casualty Branch file stated he, “…became missing in action in the vicinity of Umyang-ni, Korea while returning from a task force mission.” With no definitive information on his status, however, Pfc McGowan was maintained as MIA. The U.S. Army later determined, based on the accounts of repatriated POWs at the end of the war, that Pfc McGowan had been captured and died while in captivity. These POWs indicated Pfc McGowan had been marched into North Korea and held at a POW camp identified as the Suan Mining Camp.
The report continued, “One repatriated POW reported knowing a man identified as Pfc McGowan for one month and witnessing his death due to malnutrition sometime in June 1951 at a place he referred to as the “Mining Camp.” Two additional repatriated POWs gave hearsay statements also stating a man identified as Pfc McGowan passed away from malnutrition and illness at the “Mining Camp” with one specifying the camp was approximately 30 miles southeast of Pyongyang.”
The report further stated, “Reporters also stated Pfc McGowan was buried at the camp. The descriptions provided by reporters match and indicate they were referring to the Suan Mining Camp. In accordance with the evidence, the U.S. Army set Pfc McGowan’s official date of death as 30 June 1951, the last day of the last month he was reported alive.13 He remains unaccounted for.”
It continued, “In an effort to achieve the fullest possible accounting of missing U.S. service members, the predecessors of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) negotiated with the D.P.R.K. from 1996 to 2004 and in 2011 for access to crash sites, battlefields, and prison camp cemeteries. DPAA excavations of North Korean battlefields between 1996 and 2005 resulted in the recovery and repatriation of remains of over 220 U.S. service members. However, the D.P.R.K. did not allow the predecessor organizations of the DPAA access to Suan POW Camps.”
Information from the report said between 1997 and 1999, DPAA researchers also checked Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) sources, including the Korean War Museum in Dandong and the national history, military, and aviation museums and the Army publishing house in Beijing. “They found no information on Pfc McGowan at those locations. In meetings with the DPAA in 2006 and 2007, PLA archivists stated their intent to search their archives for information on U.S. service members missing from Korea as they began to reorganize and relocate their war records from miliary regions to Beijing. In accordance with arrangements signed with DPAA in 2008, 2012, and 2015, the PLA has reported information on U.S. service members unaccounted for from the Korean War. To date, that reporting has included only air losses, but the DPAA hopes the information releases from this multiyear effort and resumed coordination talks in 2024 will shed light on U.S. ground losses. Information on archival research with the People’s Republic of China can be found in the fact sheet “Progress in China” on DPAA’s website.
On Jan. 30, 2015, the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, and the Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory were combined to form the DPAA.
In addition to archival research and field operations, DPAA consults with commissions and associations that may have information pertaining to unaccounted-for U.S. POWs. Former-POWs, in the years that followed their repatriation, established the Korean War Ex-POW Association. Predecessor organizations of DPAA conducted several interviews with these veterans and members of this association as part of the Agency’s Oral History Program.
The report said, “In 1992 the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIA (USRJC) was established as a mechanism to account for unaccounted-for servicemen and a year later the Korean War Working Group was formed. Through its Joint Commission Support Division (JCSD), DPAA provides administrative and analytic support to the U.S. Side of the USRJC.2” Additionally, several former-POWs published memoirs and researchers have published biographies.
Foundational research on Korean War POWs is ongoing by DPAA Historians. The report said, “Emergent technologies such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are utilized to geospatially overlay hand-drawn sketches done by repatriated POWs of POW Camps and historical aerial imagery to temporally demonstrate geographic landscape progressions over time. The exact location where Pfc McGowan reportedly was buried has not been developed greatly in recent years. Etymological research on evolution of the Japanese and Korean placenames of villages are cross-referenced with North Korean gazetteers and 1951-produced topographical maps to ascertain modern-day changes to the historic places of burial.”
It continued, “Primary and secondary source materials are consulted to refine narratives of the experiences of POWs during the Korean War. Thus, while the D.P.R.K. did not allow predecessor organizations nor do they allow DPAA access to the historical loss location of Pfc McGowan; the Suan Mining Camp has been identified as a location of interest.”
The report further stated, “To resolve Unknown cases that had previously been found to be unidentifiable, the DPAA established a Disinterment Section consisting of expert historians and researchers to analyze the information within Unknown case files and submit proposals for disinterment. In July 2018, after disinterring 211 Korean War Unknowns as single sets or small groups of remains from the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP or Punchbowl) in Honolulu, HI, the DPAA submitted a request to disinter all 652 remaining Korean War Unknowns. The plan proposed systematic disinterment in seven phases. The DPAA is currently in Phase 6. All disinterred remains are currently undergoing analysis at the DPAA Laboratory. Information on the Korean War Unknowns Phased Disinterment Project is summarized in the fact sheet “Disinterring Korean War Unknowns” on DPAA’s website.”
According to the report, the agency actively seeks information from U.S. sources about Pfc McGowan’s loss, including research in the National Archives and regular dialogue with Korean War veterans’ associations, in the hope of developing new leads.
The DPAA will forward any new discoveries to family members through the U.S. Army Casualty Office.
Lawrence American Legion Hess-Eastman Post 174 Commander Chuck Moden, a Navy veteran, slightly younger than McGowan, remembered him saying, “Donald didn’t worry about anything. He was easy going.” Moden said it still bothers him to this day that McGowan died in a Chinese Communist prison camp.
