A U.S. Military soldier from Massachusetts has been accounted for after going missing during World War II, military officials said.
Wing O. Hom, a 20-year-old from Boston, went missing while his unit was “fighting against German Forces near the town of Cisterna di Latina, Italy,” according to a July 11 news release by the United States Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
German forces hadn’t reported Hom as a prisoner of war in 1945, and the War Department issued a “finding of death” early that year.
A year later, investigators recovered a set of human remains about 3 miles from where Hom was last seen. The remains were thought to be Hom, but investigators couldn’t positively identify them.
For years, the remains were interred at what is now the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery. Historians determined one of the unidentified remains must have belonged to Hom.
In 2021, the remains were sent to a lab in Nebraska for analysis and identification, according to the release.
Scientists used anthropological DNA analysis, and Hom’s body was identified in April 2023, officials said.
He will be buried in New York in October, officials said.
”Hom’s name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at Sicily-Rome American Cemetery an American Battle Monuments Commission site in Nettuno, Italy, along with others still missing from WWII,” officials said in the news release. “A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.”
___
© 2023 The Charlotte Observer
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
