The Woo family, with roots in China, Los Angeles and here in the Pioneer Valley, had long sought a medal honoring a father and grandfather they never met: 31-year old immigrant Kwack Keung Woo, killed in action in World War II just weeks before the defeat of Nazi Germany.
What they got, granddaughter Celinda Woo said, was the most unexpected of phone calls from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
“We may have found your grandfather,” Celinda Woo said. “But we need to do more DNA testing.”
Celinda Woo, her father, brother and sister all gave samples. It was a 100% match to DNA found in tooth 17 from a set of unidentified remains recovered by the American military in 1951 but honored only as an “unknown” owing to the primitive identification methods of the day.
The Pentagon brought Pvt. Woo’s remains to his family last week with a dignified transfer ceremony at Bradley International Airport. His funeral with full military honors is set for 1 p.m. Friday in the chapel at the Massachusetts Veterans Memorial Cemetery at Agawam, 1390 Main St.
“We just find that it’s profoundly emotional for our family,” she said “It’s quite a blessing. We are, as a family, so fortunate that our father is still here with us to experience something so amazing.”
Her father, Ping Chiu Woo of Chicopee who will turn 86 next month, never knew his father and might have only met him as a baby.
Kwack Keung Woo, was born in China on June 15, 1913, immigrated sometime before the war to work in the family’s herbal remedy business in Los Angeles.
“The thing back then was that you lived and worked and sent money home to support your family,” she said.
Kwack Keung Woo entered the service in 1943 and was assigned to the 80th Infantry Division, the famed “Blue Ridge Division” staffed with, at least initially, with men from the Virginia mountains.
On Feb. 7, 1945, his outfit crossed the Sauer River into Germany and began to assault enemy positions on the east bank, the military said last month in a news release. Over the next two days, Pvt. Woo’s 2nd Battalion advanced north through a wooded area.
Pvt. Woo was killed by enemy small arms fire on Feb. 9, according to the news release. His granddaughter said he fell victim to a German MP 18 submachine gun, or “burp gun.”
When American forces returned to the battle site the next day, locals told them German soldiers had buried the American dead in a mass grave.
The war in Europe would end three months later on May 8.
The American Graves Registration Command recovered the remains in 1951. It found remnants of military clothing, including a brown GI shirt, an American helmet and ammunition. But no identification tags or personal effects were located. The remains were designated X-8517 Neuville and interred at the U.S. Military Cemetery at Tunisia, known today as the North Africa American Cemetery.
In September 2022, Department of Defense and American Battle Monuments Commission personnel exhumed X-8517 Neuville for forensic analysis and comparison with missing-in-action soldiers known to have been lost near the place where Woo was killed.
The remains were sent to the laboratory for identification.
Pvt. Woo’s name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at Luxembourg American Cemetery, an American Battle Monuments site in Hamm, Luxembourg, along with the others still missing from World War II.
With his identification, a rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for, the Army said.
Of the 73,678 unaccounted American service members that remained missing as late as 1972, researchers have been able to identify 1,660 since then.
Even without a grave, Pvt. Woo had a family.
He was the husband of the late Shun Kam (Wong) Woo. He leaves his son, Ping Chiu Woo and his wife, Sue King Woo, of Chicopee; his three grandchildren, Vincent Woo and his wife, Karen, of Palos Verdes, California, Cynthia Yee and her husband, Thomas, of Watertown, and Celinda Woo and her partner, Patrick Eady, of Longmeadow; his great-grandchildren, Brian Woo and his wife, Becca, and their son, Griffin, Jon Woo and his wife, Sarah, Evan Yee and his companion, Leah, Vanessa Yee, Jasmine Mae Papoutsakis and her husband, Vugar Abdullayev, and Nikolas Papoutsakis.
Celinda Woo said her father and grandmother immigrated after the war, following the grandmother’s side of the family to Boston rather than her grandfather’s side to California.
They always joked, she said, that had their grandfather lived, the family would have been reunited in Los Angeles after the war.
Instead, the family is reunited in Massachusetts
“We were sad that this is the way we met our grandfather, but we’re excited that he is coming back to us,” she said. “For me it was difficult. I think it was a lot of emotions.”
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