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Hundreds of names engraved on a memorial to the Korean War dead have been misspelled or omitted entirely, with the names of some survivors added incorrectly, a historian said.
Hal Barker, a war historian and founder of the Korean War Project, said he has identified about 1,000 misspellings and 400 names left outside the $22 million memorial.
The original Korean War memorial, on the National Mall in Washington DC, opened in 1995: an updated tribute, complete with a wall of remembrance, opened in July.
Barker said he was stunned by the magnitude of the errors.
“My head hurts,” he said. the washington post.
“The fact is that we have a memorial that has a huge amount of errors and there is no way to pay to fix it.”
The Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington DC opened in July but features hundreds of errors.
Ambrosio Guillén, who died in battle on July 25, 1953, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Valor, but his name is misspelled on the monument.
The Korean War was fought between 1950 and 1953 and pitted the United States, South Korea, and their allies against North Korea and China, with the help of the Soviet Union.
Dwight Angell died at age 24 when his plane was shot down over China, but his name was omitted from the memorial.
It began when North Korea invaded the South, with the goal of unifying Korea under the communist regime of Pyongyang, and the United States came to the aid of Seoul.
The United States lost 34,000 service members during the war, and more than two million Koreans, civilians and combatants, were killed.
The memorial in DC includes, in addition to American names, 7,100 names of Koreans who were part of the Korean Surge to the US Army.
Among those omitted from the memorial is Navy Ensign Dwight C. Angell, who was shot down at age 24 on January 18, 1953 off the coast of China.
Megan Marx, the daughter of Angell’s first wife, Gerry, told the newspaper that she plans to travel from her Colorado home on Wednesday to mark the 70th anniversary of his death at the memorial, though her name is not there.
She was also present at the dedication, in July.
Marx said his mother, who died in 1999, was haunted by the loss of Angell.
“All these things with Dwight were never far from the surface for her,” he said.
She never stopped looking for him.
The monument is located on the National Mall in Washington DC
Those whose names were misspelled include Marine Corps Sgt. Ambrosio Guillen, 23.
He was killed in battle on July 25, 1953.
The Colorado-born Guillén was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for valor, but he spells himself Guilien, despite being a local hero in his Texas hometown of El Paso, with a school and veteran’s center bearing his Name.
Another misspelled name is Army PFC. William Red Horn, member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe.
At the memorial, he is named as Horn W Red.
He was 18 years old when he was assassinated on December 9, 1951.
A third misspelled name is that of the Navy helicopter pilot, Lt. jg John Kelvin Koelsch, who was shot down on July 3, 1951 while trying to rescue a wounded comrade.
He was captured and died three months later, on October 16.
In 1955, he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism; however, his name is misspelled as Koelsh.
John Kelvin Koelsch, a helicopter pilot, was born in London to an American banker father. The family returned to the United States and settled in the town of Briarcliff Manor, Westchester County, New York. Koelsch enlisted as an air cadet in the United States Navy in September 1942 and died in captivity in 1951. His name is misspelled on the monument.
army soldier. William Red Horn, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, is named as Horn W Red on the monument
Other names are on the wall even though they survived the war.
They include Alfred P. Bradshaw of the Marines, who died in Missouri in 2012, Barker said.
The Pentagon said it was working to correct the names and urged those with concerns to get in touch.
Some of the errors are because the deaths are classified as part of the Cold War, since the conflicts overlapped.
Army Maj. Charlie Dietz, a Pentagon spokesman, said efforts were being made to correct the monument.
‘Mistakes are a very unfortunate mistake and the [Department of Defense] is working in conjunction with the Department of the Interior to correct those errors,’ he said.
“We are also aware that some names are on the Wall of Remembrance that were not included in the Department’s final list of Korean War casualties.
‘The respective military departments reviewed all names on the Korean War Casualty List for correctness in available official military records.
“Although not common, the official records themselves may have contained errors.”
Added Dietz: “We encourage all family members or concerned citizens to notify the Department of any names that have been omitted, misspelled, or included in error.”