GARY – When U.S. Army Sgt. Cresenciano ‘Chano’ Garcia, Jr. of Texas went missing on Dec. 1, 1951, during the Korean Conflict, his family, some of whom moved to Northwest Indiana, hoped he would return to them.
Little did they know it would take 73 years.
“It’s a miracle,” said Sandra Strong, a niece whose DNA was used to identify Garcia’s remains.
In August 1950, Garcia was a member of Headquarters Company, 9th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division. He was reported missing in action during a battle just south of Kunu-ri, South Korea. His remains could not be immediately recovered, and he was officially declared dead on or around Feb. 28, 1951 in POW Camp 5, in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
In 1954, the opposing nations reached an agreement to exchange war dead, the execution of which was known as Operation GLORY. Remains were sent to the Central Identification Unit in Kokura, Japan, for processing and identification. One set of Unknown Remains, designated X-14189, was reportedly recovered from Ch’angsong (Camp 1), D.P.R.K., and could not be identified after analysis. While that location is inconsistent with Sergeant Garcia’s reported location of death at Pyoktong (Camp 5), it is possible that remains from Camp 1 and 5 exhumations were inadvertently mixed when delivered during Operation GLORY.
The remains were later transported with all the unidentified Korean War remains and buried as Unknowns at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1956.
On Dec. 9, 2019, DPAA personnel exhumed Unknown Remains X-14189 for further scientific testing and analysis. Further research by a DPAA historian and forensic anthropologist determined the remains could possibly be associated with Garcia. The remains were disinterred and sent to the DPAA Laboratory for analysis.
To identify Garcia’s remains, scientists from DPAA used dental and anthropological analysis, as well as circumstantial evidence. Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis.
While on a trip to Washington, DC in 2006, Strong and the late Sylvia Perez, a sister to Garcia, learned about the opportunity to donate DNA in an effort to identify soldiers’ remains and both donated, hoping against hope to find their brother/uncle’s remains.
“Seventeen years later we got a call saying they found a previously unknown soldier’s remains to be a 99.9% match to Chano,” said Strong. “He had apparently died enroute from one POW camp to another and had been buried since 1956.”
Strong and other Northwest Indiana relatives, who live in East Chicago, Hammond, Griffith, Highland, Cedar Lake, Lakes of the Four Seasons and Portage, wanted to host a Celebration of Life service for family members who could not make it to the funeral Mass and burial in Laredo, Texas on Oct. 14.
Strong, a retired steelworker, reached out to Mike Lohse, a United Steelworkers Union financial agent, who agreed to make Local 1014’s McBride Hall in Gary available for the Celebration of Life on Sept. 16. “We were happy to help out a family member, whether a current or retired member, with something that is so important,” said Lohse. “He was missing in action, a POW, and they were finally able to bring him home.”
Debbie Hernandez, another niece of Sgt. Garcia, is a parishioner at the Cathedral of the Holy Angels in Gary and asked Deacon Martin Brown to give a blessing at the service. Saying he was honored to attend, Deacon Brown notified Bishop Robert J. McClory of the prayer service, and he commented: “Thank you for sharing this (information), Deacon Brown. After all these years, I am glad the family is finding, perhaps, some degree of closure and peace. May he rest in peace.”
Strong said her Uncle Chano was the youngest and only boy among five siblings and that her mother, Carmen Garrett, moved from Texas to Indiana, followed by two other sisters, Paula Jimenez and Emma Vasquez, while sister Lydia Vera remained in Texas. “My uncle had wanted to move up here, too, but he joined the Army at 17,” she said.
Sgt. Garcia is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. His name is also inscribed on the Korean War Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, DC, which was updated in 2022 to include the names of the fallen. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate that he has been accounted for.
