Photo credit: Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency
We have talked about Asian Americans who have died for their country during military service, and the identification of the remains of Wing O. Hom adds another to that list. Hom, from Boston, was killed in action in Italy during World War II. Anthropological and DNA analyses were used to identify his body, which was buried at the Sicily-Rome American cemetary in Nettuna, Italy.
I was surprised to learn that there is an entire agency, called the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), that tries to identify missing military personnel. Here is the profile it has on Hom. The Sons of Liberty Museum also tracks Missing in Action (MIA) military personnel going back as far as WWI. I looked around its list (time consuming as there are a lot of MIAs) and found a number of MIA Asian Americans.
Hom will bere buried in Brooklyn, New York on October 11, 2023.
