Edward Smith enlisted in the Army at age 17 on Aug. 31, 1949. One year later, just three days after his 18th birthday, he was declared missing while fighting in the Korean War.
On Friday, more than seven decades after he went missing, he was laid to rest alongside his parents in his hometown of Bethlehem. Smith’s remains were identified in May by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. “To me it’s a miracle,” Anita Smith, Edward’s sister-in-law, said of his remains being identified after 74 years.
Cpl. Edward “Eddie” Smith was a member of Baker Company, 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, and went missing Aug. 31, 1950, while fighting North Korean forces near Changnyong, South Korea, according to the DPAA.
In October of that year, a set of remains was recovered from a grave in a rice paddy near the village of Ibang-ni, about 8 miles from there. Investigators could not scientifically identify the remains, and the following February, the remains were taken to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. The DPAA exhumed the remains in June 2021 for analysis and identification.
Scientists used dental and anthropological records to identify Smith. Anita Smith said her husband, David Smith, who was Edward’s brother, provided DNA to the DPAA a few times to see if Edward could be identified. The DPAA’s mission is to account for missing personnel in the country.
It wasn’t until mid-May that she and her husband received the ca.