Americans are furious after it was disclosed in a report that the new $22 million Washington, D.C. Korean War memorial has a whopping 1,016 spelling errors, lists 245 veterans who didn’t even die in the war, and leaves off 400 names of service members who gave their lives in the conflict.
Ted and Hal Barker, experts on the conflict and founders of the Korean War Project, produced a report that lists the errors found on the monument that was unveiled in July.
“If you’re killed or died in a war, people need to know what your full name was so they can find you and memorialize you properly,” Ted Barker told NBC Dallas. “A name is everything we have.”
The original Korean War memorial is located on the National Mall in the Capitol. It was unveiled in 1995. The new addition opened last year with the Wall of Remembrance which was meant to honor the dead.
The DoD’s 1st Korean War Memorial, is located on The Mall in DC. It cost $22M, and is to honor the 43,000 vets we lost.
Historians & relatives are livid over 400 names were left off, and over 1000 spelling mistakes were found.But the DoD CAN spell ‘DIVERSITY’ just fine?! pic.twitter.com/SbGK5S147F
— 🇺🇸ProudArmyBrat (@leslibless) January 17, 2023
Barker was shocked at the number of mistakes on the monument.
“It makes my head hurt,” he told The Washington Post in an interview. “The fact is we have a memorial that has a huge number of errors and no way of paying to fix it.”
The Korean War took place between 1950 and 1953. The United States, South Korea, and our allies faced off against North Korea and China who got a helping hand from the Soviet Union. North Korea started the war when it invaded South Korea, intending to unify the Koreas under the communist regime in Pyongyang. More than 6 million American men and women served alongside South Korean forces during the conflict, according to US government data.
A reported 36,634 American soldiers lost their lives in the war according to Business Insider. Over two million Korean civilians and combatants were killed.
The Korean War Veterans Memorial.
Washington, DC. #USA 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/bBxNGrtzVU— 🚶🏻Curtis S. Chin (@CurtisSChin) January 13, 2023
The memorial lists the Americans who perished in the fight as well as 7,100 Koreans who were part of the U.S. Army.
Navy Ensign Dwight C. Angell is one of those left off the memorial. He was 24 when he was shot down on January 18, 1953, off the coast of China.
Angell’s daughter Megan Marx told the Washington Post that she plans to travel from her home in Colorado on Wednesday to mark the 70th anniversary of his death at the memorial despite his name not being listed there. She was at the dedication of the memorial in July. Her mother passed in 1999 and was haunted by the loss of her husband after he died.
My grandfather Lloyd Smith Jr was on same plane with Dwight Angell, 11 men lost their lives and forever changed our families! We are fighting to get them the recognition they deserve
— Terri Mumley (@TMANDMM) January 17, 2023
“All of this stuff with Dwight was never far from the surface for her,” Marx commented. “She never stopped looking for him.”
Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Ambrosio Guillen, 23, also had his name misspelled. He died in battle on July 25, 1953. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for valor and he is a local hero in his hometown of El Paso, Texas. A school and a veterans’ center are named after him.
Army Pfc. William Red Horn also had his name misspelled. He’s a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. He was 18 when he died on December 9, 1951.
Navy helicopter pilot Lt. j.g. John Kelvin Koelsch had his name misspelled as well. He was shot down on July 3, 1951, while attempting to rescue an injured brother-in-arms. Koelsch was captured by the communists and died three months later on October 16. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism in 1955.
US Korean War Memorial Misspells More Than 1,000 Names.
A $22 million wall of remembrance being built to honor the names of US service members killed during the 1950-53 Korean War is so sloppy that it misses 500 dead victims.#WarMemorial pic.twitter.com/iFMClFbCRj
— 𝙍𝘼𝙐𝙇 (@IcanArgue) January 10, 2023
Then there are those names that are on the wall even though they survived the war, including Marine Alfred P. Bradshaw, who died in Missouri in 2012, according to Barker.
Business Insider is reporting that the name of a man who was killed in a motorcycle accident in Hawaii and another who drank antifreeze both made it onto the granite slab of the memorial.
The Pentagon claims it is working on correcting the names and wants anyone who is concerned over it to get in touch with them. But without the funds, those corrections may be a long time coming, if ever.
“The errors are a very unfortunate mistake and the [Department of Defense] is working in tandem with the Dept. of Interior to correct those mistakes,” Army Maj. Charlie Dietz, a spokesman for the Pentagon said.
Accidental?
— Luis B. Aramburu (@luisbaram) January 17, 2023
“We are also aware that some names are on the Wall of Remembrance which were not included on the Department’s final list of Korean War casualties. The respective Military Departments reviewed every name on the Korean War Casualty List for correctness against available official military records. Though not common, the official records themselves may have contained errors,” he contended.
“We encourage all family members or concerned citizens to notify the Department of any names that were omitted, misspelled, or included in error,” Dietz added.
But Barker told NBC Dallas that government officials were informed about potential errors years ago by him and his brother and were sent records with the corrected names. They never responded.
“If they had just talked to us, and worked with us, we could have saved United States taxpayers probably $10 to $15 million because that’s what it’s going to take to re-do this,” Hal Barker told NBC Dallas.
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