The remains of a soldier who died during the Korean War will be interred this coming Saturday at Hollywood Cemetery in McComb.
Graveside services for Army Sgt. 1st Class Ellis Coon will be performed by Craft-Dillon Funeral Home, preceding the interment.
A native of Mount Hermon, Coon was a member of the Army’s C Battery, 503rd Field Artillery Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division.
He was reported missing in action Dec. 1, 1950, after his unit was engaged in the Battle of Ch’ongch’on, in the vicinity of Kunu-ri, North Korea.
According to testimony provided by repatriated POWs after the war, it was determined that Coon had been a Prisoner of War in Camp No. 5 and died during captivity of malnutrition and lack of medical care on, or around, Feb. 14, 1951, at the age of 30. The U.S. Army issued a presumptive finding of death for him in March 1954, declaring Coon non-recoverable in January 1956.
Almost four decades later, on Dec. 21, 1993, North Korea turned over 34 boxes of remains believed to be of U.S. service members who had died during the war. Some of the remains were reportedly recovered from Tongju-ri, Pyokdong County, North Phyongan Province – the same area as POW Camp No. 5, where Sgt. Coon is believed to have died. Scientific analysis by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency Laboratory found five boxes of remains recovered from Tongu-ri contained commingled skeletal remains of several individuals.
When war first broke out in Korea, American forces pushed the North Koreans back into the north and some thought the war would soon be over. But China decided to become involved to assist North Korea. The Chinese forces were overwhelming and many America soldiers were captured by Chinese, not North Koreans.
Camp 5 was a Chinese Army POW camp, and the conditions there were inhumane, according to former POW’s who survived. Many POW’s in the camp slowly wasted away from starvation. The winter cold was brutal, and pneumonia and dysentery were common. In addition, some of the POW’s were tortured.
It is believed that fully one-third of all American soldiers who were sent to Camp 5 died there.
Sgt. Coon was accounted for by the DPAA Sept. 27, 2022, after his remains were identified using circumstantial evidence as well as anthropological, mitochondrial DNA and autosomal DNA analysis.
His name is recorded on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, also known as the Punchbowl, along with the others still missing from the Korean War. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has, at long last, been accounted for.
70 years after hostilities in the Korean War ended, more than 7,500 Americans remain unaccounted for.
