Operation Reunite - Returning Military Medals to Soldiers

Operation Reunite is a very impressive effort on the part of the Illinois State Treasurer. To quote from their website:

The Unclaimed Property Division of the Illinois State Treasurer’s Office presently has in its care nearly 200 items belonging to past and present servicemen and women. These items include military medals, artifacts, ribbons, and awards spanning more than a century of American conflict. One military medal even dates back to the Spanish American War circa 1898. Other priceless items include service records, dog tags and commendations from World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

It is the goal of the Illinois State Treasurer's Office to reunite these very important military medals and awards with the men and women who earned them through their great sacrifice and service. 

Please take a look at the list of names who either were given the medals or who have a connection to the original medal owner. Perhaps you will spot an ancestor or relative!

Before leaving, please take a moment to view Olive Tree Genealogy's Soldiers Dog Tag Cases. Some are still unresolved meaning we have not yet found a descendant to send the found dog tag home.

Korean War Casualties now on Fold3

Records of U.S. Army officers and soldiers killed or wounded in the Korean War are now available on Fold3. Korean War Casualties is available free to any visitors to the site.

One quarter of the nearly 110,000 records in Korean War Casualties connects to information about Army personnel who died during the war, 1950-1953, including those who died while a prisoner of war or missing in action. The remaining three quarters are for nonfatal Army casualties.

The Korean War Casualties database is from the Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1905-1981 (Record Group 407), at the National Archives (NARA). It was compiled between 1950 and 1970, and covers the period from the earliest casualty (February 13, 1950) to the latest date in the date of disposition field, December 31, 1953.

The information on each casualty may include: name, service prefix and number, grade, Army branch, place and date of casualty, state and county of residence, type of casualty, detail/previous casualty type, casualty group, place and date of disposition, year of birth (for deceased casualties only), military occupational specialty, organization troop program sequence number, element sequence, unit number, race, component, and disposition of evacuations.

Launch your search within the records from the Korean War Casualty title page or use the browse option and highlight the Korean War category. Records are ordered alphabetically. (NARA also provides a list of fatal casualties by state on its website.)

When you find a soldier in the Korean War Casualties records on Fold3, you’ll link directly to a memorial page for that soldier where we invite you to add stories, photos, documents, and other information relating to that individual. Examples of two pages to which newspaper articles were added include twice-wounded Purple Heart recipient Dwight L. Huston, of Mt. Vernon, IL; and Pittsfield, MA, native Arthur A. Boland.

When added to the memorial pages, your stories and photos help sustain the memories of United States heroes in the Korean War and allow others to connect with and honor them.