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1950 – 1953
Korea's county toll can be counted exactly, because the Defense Department's casualty file counts it: The National Archives' published extract of the Defense Casualty Analysis System records every American fatal casualty of the Korean War by home-of-record county. Counted in full for this section, it carries forty-three fatal casualties with St. Joseph County as home of record — soldiers, Marines and airmen, from the war's first autumn (a county private died 10 September 1950; another on 16 July 1950 stands at this section's early edge) to its last days: a Marine second lieutenant from Walkerton died on 24 July 1953, three days before the armistice. This section's city field is blank for most Army men — the Korean extract notoriously leaves Army home cities "unknown" — but where it speaks it maps the county whole: South Bend's Marines and airmen, two men of Mishawaka (boundary-printed; Mishawaka's build carries them), two of Walkerton, and Staff Sergeant Hugh Maynard Burch of New Carlisle, an airman who died 12 April 1951 with his remains not recovered — one of the county's names the war never gave back. The Korean War Veterans Memorial's war is the Veterans section's ground; the Tribune's Service Notes index, which runs through Korea, is the county's running record of the men who went. Forty-three is this section's count of those who did not come back.
Sources:
- National Archives, U.S. Military Fatal Casualties of the Korean War for Home-State-of-Record: Indiana, prepared from the Korean War Extract Data File of the Defense Casualty Analysis System (RG 330), as of 29 April 2008 — counted in full for home-of-record county "St. Joseph": forty-three records; the Burch and Walkerton entries and the 1950–1953 date spread as printed in the list.
- St. Joseph County Public Library, Military Service Notes Column Index — the Tribune's running Korea-era service record for the county.