The unaccounted-for: the county's man is South Bend's

1966 – 2026

The test run: The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency's Vietnam accounting report for Indiana — the Vietnam (PMSEA) Report for Indiana of February 11, 2022 — was matched in full in South Bend's pass. It carries exactly one St. Joseph County man still unaccounted for: Major John Russell Hills of South Bend, a pilot of the 1st Air Commando Squadron, whose A-1E Skyraider was lost over Laos on February 14, 1966, and whose case stands in the agency's "Active Pursuit" status. He is South Bend's son and South Bend's record carries him whole.

Mishawaka's position, printed plainly: No Mishawaka man stands among the unaccounted-for of the Vietnam War in that report. The town's sixteen all came home to burial or to graves accounted for abroad; the county's one open case belongs to the city across the river, and the boundary is printed here so that no Mishawaka reader adopts him and no South Bend reader loses him. For Korea, Mishawaka does have an unaccounted-for man of her own. The county's forty-three dead include nine whose remains the federal casualty file marks not recovered, and one of the nine is Mishawaka's: Edwin Tabaczynski, second lieutenant, United States Air Force, home of record Mishawaka, died August 20, 1951, as the Korea article below sets out from the file itself. His case beyond this section's mark — its present state in the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency's Korean War accounting — is named among the gaps; this section's own statement, that his remains were not recovered, is the documented fact this record prints.

Sources:

1. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Vietnam (PMSEA) Report for Indiana, February 11, 2022, matched in full in the South Bend pass (Hills entry and his Active Pursuit status).
2. South Bend pass, wars-second-pass file: the Korean War county enumeration from the DCAS extract, with remains-not-recovered marks.