More than 70 years after an American teenager vanished while fighting overseas in the Korean War, modern forensics finally allowed the United States military to identify his remains.
John A. Spruell, a U.S. Army soldier from Cortez, Colorado, was declared missing in action on Dec. 6, 1950, the military said in a news release. He disappeared in the midst of a brutal battle that lasted more than two weeks in a frozen and remote North Korean mountain range, and even though the remains of some killed in that area were eventually returned to the U.S., no one knew for decades whether Spruell's body was among them.
Presumed dead, the 19-year-old was officially listed as lost and unaccounted for by the Army. The remains that military scientists would not confirm belonged to him until 2023 were buried in a grave labeled "unknown" at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.
Days before Spruell was declared missing, his unit, a field artillery branch, had fought in the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, a notoriously violent conflict that American historians have since dubbed "a nightmare." It marked a turning point in the broader war, as hundreds of thousands of soldiers with the newly involved People's Republic of China launched an unexpectedly massive attack on the U.S. and its allies while trying to push United Nations forces out of North Korea.
The Battle of Chosin Reservoir is remembered as one of the most treacherous on record, because the freezing weather and rugged terrain in which it unfolded was so extreme and because there were so many casualties. Military officials say Spruell disappeared in the wake of intense combat near Hagaru-ri, a North Korean village at the lower tip of the reservoir where U.S. forces had set up a base.
It was unclear what exactly happened to Spruell after the battle, since "the circumstances of his loss were not immediately recorded," according to the military, and there was no evidence suggesting he had been captured as a prisoner of war.
An international agreement later allowed U.S. officials to recover the remains of about 3,000 Americans who had been killed in Korea, but none could be definitively linked back to Spruell.
In 2018, the unidentified remains of hundreds of slain soldiers were disinterred from buried the military cemetery in Honolulu, also called the Punchbowl, and they were examined again using advanced methods that did not exist until long after the Korean War.
Confirmation of Spruell's identity was received in August. The military has announced that he will be laid to rest in Cortez, although the specific date is yet to be determined. This revelation coincided with another confirmation by the military regarding an American teenager who was declared deceased during the Korean War in December 1953. Through forensic tests, the remains of Richard Seloover, a U.S. Army corporal from Whiteside, Illinois, were identified in January. Seloover was only 17 years old at the time of his death.
The U.S. military has disclosed that approximately 2,000 Americans who lost their lives in the Korean War were identified in the immediate years following the conflict, with an additional 450 identifications made over the subsequent decades. Despite these efforts, around 7,500 individuals remain unaccounted for, and the recovery of the remains of several hundred is deemed unfeasible.
