OUR MILITARY.

I never worked with Jim while I was the Air Force uniform, but our paths crossed afterwards multiple times. Like those of us in the fire service the Air Force especially the Strategic Air Command (SAC) remained in his heart after retirement. He rose to become the number 1 enlisted man in SAC to becoming the enlisted leader of the entire Air Force. He looked out for the all the members, regardless of your rank or title. Upon retirement he settled in the Offutt Air Force Base community near Omaha, Nebraska. I enjoyed working with Jim over the years on various SAC related projects. You were a gentlemen. I was honored to have known you & to call you a friend.
 
On July 27, 2022 the Wall of Remembrance was unveiled at the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. It lists the names of 36,634 Americans and 7,174 Koreans who were killed in action together in the war that ended 69 years prior.
Unfortunately, historians claim the names of at least 595 men are missing from the wall. Since the war was a "police action", no war zone was ever formally established. Most of the missing names are the result of plane crashes around Japan and the Korean Peninsula during the war.
Worse, at least 868 (and maybe as many as a thousand) names are misspelled. These misspellings have been known since they were published by the National Archives in 2011. Attempts to correct the names failed over the intervening years. Even though wrong, the stated reason was that Congress mandated they be used since they came from the DOD as official casualty lists. For comparison, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial has about 100 misspellings with 20,000 more names.
Incredibly, four of the misspelled names are those of men who are Medal of Honor recipients!
 
"The Korean War Veterans Memorial on the National Mall in Washington was first dedicated 27 years ago, on July 27, 1995. Construction on the rededicated memorial began in March 2021. The $22 million project was funded by donations from the peoples of the United States and South Korea, formally named the Republic of Korea.

The names on the Wall of Remembrance are arranged in order of rank and branch of service to demonstrate to visitors how the war’s burden fell unevenly across the military.

Another important element of the wall is that the names of U.S. service members and Korean augmentees to the U.S. Army are not listed separately. Instead, they’re mingled together — just as they fought together during the war."



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