World War II POW/MIA from Pennsylvania identified after 80 years
U.S. Army Air Forces Cpl. Glenn H. Hodak of Cambridge Springs was only 23 years old when he was captured and died in the prison fire May 26, 1945, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced.
While Hodak was accounted for Sept. 25, 2024, it wasn't until recently that his family was fully briefed, allowing more details about his service to be released.
In March 1945, Hodak was a member of the 93rd Bombardment Squadron, 19th Bombardment Group, when the B-29 'Superfortress' he was a gunner on was shot down on a mission to Tokyo. The agency said that Hodak was initially reported MIA (Missing In Action), and it was later learned he was captured as a POW (Prisoner Of War).
Central Pennsylvania WW II Lt. accounted for nearly 80 years later
Sadly, Hodak's remains were not immediately recovered nor identified after the war.
American Graves Registration Service (AGRS) personnel searched for and disinterred the remains of U.S. servicemen throughout the Pacific Theater. AGRS anticipated the recovery of 62 service members in early 1946. Hodak, and 38 others, however, were unable to be identified and ultimately entered as unknowns in the Manilla American Cemetery and Memorial, in Fort Bonifacio, Taguig.
The Agency reports that in March and April 2022, those 39 Unknowns were sent to the DPAA laboratory for analysis.
Using dental and anthropological analysis along with circumstantial evidence, the Agency was able to identify Hodak's remains.Hodak's remains will be returned to Pennsylvania and buried in Spring Creek in May.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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San Francisco Chronicle
4 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
US military chaplaincy marks 250 years of providing spiritual support to service members
(RNS) — In 1775, a year before there was a United States and six weeks after the Continental Army was formed, George Washington made a declaration that has shaped the military ever since. 'We need chaplains,' he reportedly remarked, prompting action by the Continental Congress near the start of the Revolutionary War. The U.S. military chaplaincy marked 250 years on July 29 as the national military marked its own 250th anniversary in June. A week of celebrations includes a golf tournament at Fort Jackson in South Carolina, hosted by an organization raising funds for scholarships for family members of chaplains, and a sold-out ball nearby in Columbia. Meanwhile, across the globe, thousands of clergy in uniform continue to provide counsel and care to military members of a range of faiths or no faith. 'In times of peace and war, our chaplains have held fast as beacons of hope and resilience for our troops, whether enduring the brutal winter of Valley Forge, comforting the wounded and dying on the battlefields during the Civil War, braving trench warfare in World War I, storming the beaches of Normandy during World War II, marching the frozen mountains during the Korean War, slogging through the rice paddies and jungle battlefields of Vietnam or traveling the bomb-filled roads of Iraq and Afghanistan,' said retired Chaplain (Major General) Doug Carver, a former Army chief of chaplains in charge of the Southern Baptist Convention's chaplaincy ministries, at the denomination's June annual meeting in Dallas. A month later at the annual session of the Progressive National Baptist Convention in Chicago, Navy Chaplain J.M. Smith, the grandson of a former PNBC president, stood before delegates and described his just-completed tour as a Marine Corps command chaplain in Okinawa, Japan, and his plans to report to a ship in Norfolk, Virginia, to begin a tour of Europe and the Middle East and be promoted to lieutenant commander. 'My team and I have ministered to thousands of Marines, sailors, civilians and Japanese,' he said. 'We increased our chapel's membership from eight to 100. We incorporated spiritual readiness into our base's core curriculum.'' ___ Chaplains serve in hospitals, hospices and manufacturing plants, and while chaplaincy researchers see commonalities among them, there are also key differences in the military. All are involved in gaining the trust of people who are in their particular milieu, enabling them to think and sometimes pray through their times of greatest need and day-to-day struggles. An example of both the danger and the dedication of military service chaplaincy is the 1943 death of four chaplains — two Protestant, one Catholic and one Jewish — who helped save some of those aboard a World War II ship, turning over their life jackets and praying and singing hymns before it sank. All four were trained at Harvard University, then the site of the Army's chaplain training school, during a two-year wartime period. "It was a real defining moment,' said retired Gen. Steve Schaick, who served as Air Force chief of chaplains from 2018 to 2021, and in the same role for the Space Force from 2019 to 2021. 'The stories that came from that really kind of highlighted chaplains at their best.' The Army's chaplaincy corps also includes religious affairs specialists and religious education directors. Some service members provide armed protection to unarmed chaplains and set up worship spaces in on-base chapels or makeshift altars on truck hoods in the field. For example, Berry Gordy, who later founded Motown Records, served as a private in the Korean War and played a portable organ and was known as a chaplain assistant, notes ' Sacred Duty,' a new comic book posted on the Army's website to mark the anniversary. While 218 chaplains served in the Revolutionary War, 9,117 chaplains served in World War II, according to the Army. Currently, the Army has 1,500 chaplains on active duty. The Navy Chaplain Corps, which began on Nov. 18, 1775, had 24 chaplains during the Civil War; 203 by the end of World War I; 1,158 at its height in 1990; and currently has 898 on active duty, according to the Navy. 'Today's Chaplain Corps includes Chaplains representing a multitude of faith groups, and the Chaplain Corps recruiting team is actively working to increase the Corps' diversity, with a special focus on increasing the number of women Chaplains in the Corps and the number of Chaplains representing low-density faith groups,' reads an Army historical booklet marking the Chaplain Corps' 250 years. Initially, U.S. military chaplains were Protestants. The first Catholic chaplains served in the Mexican-American War in 1846, and the first rabbi was commissioned in 1862 and served in the Civil War. The first Muslim chaplains were commissioned in the Army in 1993. The first Buddhist Army chaplain was named in 2008, followed by the first Hindu chaplain in 2011. Chaplain Margaret Kibben, acting chaplain of the House of Representatives and former chief of chaplains of the Navy — the first woman in that role — said the isolation and the immediacy of ethical decisions faced by military members, as well as a high level of confidentially, can make the work of military chaplaincy teams different from other settings where chaplains work. 'It's the one place that people can go where there's essentially a sanctuary around them, wherever they find themselves, a safe place to have somebody to talk to about a whole host of issues,' she said, adding that topics can include anything from supporting their families to handling combat responsibilities. 'How do you deal with those issues in a place where you're not going to look stupid, you're not going to look weak or unreliable because you have these doubts and you have these concerns — to have a place that you can go to ensure that you can get that off your chest?' Those private conversations often are not faith-filled, added Kibben, reflecting on her military career that began in 1986. 'What I realized later, 20, 30 years later, was that many service members have never learned the language of faith,' she said, citing terms like confession and forgiveness. 'So as a chaplain, we had to figure out our way around the lack of a lexicon of faith. How do you speak about grace to someone who doesn't have a clue how powerful grace is?' Another change, sparked by the efforts of Julie Moore, the wife of a military officer who served in the Vietnam War, was the Army's method for notifying the next of kin when a soldier died. Soon after a 1960s battle in that war, a chaplain and a uniformed officer began teaming up to knock on families' doors; prior to that time, the news arrived in a telegram delivered by a cab driver. The work of chaplains has sometimes been the source of church-state debates. For example, Michael 'Mikey' Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for separation of church and state in the U.S. military, has questioned what he viewed as proselytism in the chaplains' ranks. Meanwhile, conservative Christian organizations have voiced concerns about an antipathy against some Christians in military ranks. Karen Diefendorf, a two-time Army chaplain and a board member of the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps Regimental Association, which supports chaplains and their families, said the primary goal for chaplains is 'to provide for the free exercise rights of every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, Coast Guardsman.' She currently is an interim minister of an independent Methodist church in South Carolina, after serving as a chaplain at Tysons Foods and in hospice care. 'I had soldiers who were practitioners of Wiccan faith, and my job is not to say to them, 'Hey, wouldn't you like to love Jesus?'' she said, recalling how she assisted a Wiccan Army member serving in Korea. 'My job was to help that young soldier find where his particular group of folks met and where he could practice his faith.' Also during her service in Korea in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Diefendorf said she provided cassette tapes of sermons to soldiers and entrusted one with Communion elements because she knew she wouldn't be able to reach their location often. 'So far, the courts have upheld that you certainly have two competing clauses within the First Amendment, establishment and free exercise,' she said. 'And at this point, certainly chaplains have to walk that fine line not to create establishment in the midst of trying to also enable people to practice their beliefs.' Schaick recalled being deployed overseas in the Air Force when a new rabbi joined his staff. On arrival, the rabbi described himself as 'first and foremost a chaplain and secondarily a rabbi' — an order of priorities that Schaick said applies to chaplains to this day, regardless of their faith perspective. 'The longer you serve in the chaplaincy, I think the closer you get to really believing that — and therefore, religious affiliation becomes secondary,' he said. 'It's 'How're you doing today?' and 'I'd love to hear what's on your heart' and 'How can I be able to help you today?' Those kind of questions, quite frankly, are impervious to religious distinctions.'
Hamilton Spectator
4 hours ago
- Hamilton Spectator
US military chaplaincy marks 250 years of providing spiritual support to service members
(RNS) — In 1775, a year before there was a United States and six weeks after the Continental Army was formed, George Washington made a declaration that has shaped the military ever since. 'We need chaplains,' he reportedly remarked, prompting action by the Continental Congress near the start of the Revolutionary War. The U.S. military chaplaincy marked 250 years on July 29 as the national military marked its own 250th anniversary in June. A week of celebrations includes a golf tournament at Fort Jackson in South Carolina, hosted by an organization raising funds for scholarships for family members of chaplains, and a sold-out ball nearby in Columbia. Meanwhile, across the globe, thousands of clergy in uniform continue to provide counsel and care to military members of a range of faiths or no faith. 'In times of peace and war, our chaplains have held fast as beacons of hope and resilience for our troops, whether enduring the brutal winter of Valley Forge, comforting the wounded and dying on the battlefields during the Civil War, braving trench warfare in World War I, storming the beaches of Normandy during World War II, marching the frozen mountains during the Korean War, slogging through the rice paddies and jungle battlefields of Vietnam or traveling the bomb-filled roads of Iraq and Afghanistan,' said retired Chaplain (Major General) Doug Carver, a former Army chief of chaplains in charge of the Southern Baptist Convention's chaplaincy ministries, at the denomination's June annual meeting in Dallas. A month later at the annual session of the Progressive National Baptist Convention in Chicago, Navy Chaplain J.M. Smith, the grandson of a former PNBC president, stood before delegates and described his just-completed tour as a Marine Corps command chaplain in Okinawa, Japan, and his plans to report to a ship in Norfolk, Virginia, to begin a tour of Europe and the Middle East and be promoted to lieutenant commander. 'My team and I have ministered to thousands of Marines, sailors, civilians and Japanese,' he said. 'We increased our chapel's membership from eight to 100. We incorporated spiritual readiness into our base's core curriculum.'' ___ This content is written and produced by Religion News Service and distributed by The Associated Press. RNS and AP partner on some religion news content. RNS is solely responsible for this story. ___ Chaplains serve in hospitals, hospices and manufacturing plants, and while chaplaincy researchers see commonalities among them, there are also key differences in the military. All are involved in gaining the trust of people who are in their particular milieu, enabling them to think and sometimes pray through their times of greatest need and day-to-day struggles. An example of both the danger and the dedication of military service chaplaincy is the 1943 death of four chaplains — two Protestant, one Catholic and one Jewish — who helped save some of those aboard a World War II ship, turning over their life jackets and praying and singing hymns before it sank. All four were trained at Harvard University , then the site of the Army's chaplain training school, during a two-year wartime period. 'It was a real defining moment,' said retired Gen. Steve Schaick, who served as Air Force chief of chaplains from 2018 to 2021, and in the same role for the Space Force from 2019 to 2021. 'The stories that came from that really kind of highlighted chaplains at their best.' The Army's chaplaincy corps also includes religious affairs specialists and religious education directors. Some service members provide armed protection to unarmed chaplains and set up worship spaces in on-base chapels or makeshift altars on truck hoods in the field. For example, Berry Gordy, who later founded Motown Records, served as a private in the Korean War and played a portable organ and was known as a chaplain assistant, notes ' Sacred Duty ,' a new comic book posted on the Army's website to mark the anniversary. While 218 chaplains served in the Revolutionary War, 9,117 chaplains served in World War II, according to the Army. Currently, the Army has 1,500 chaplains on active duty. The Navy Chaplain Corps, which began on Nov. 18, 1775, had 24 chaplains during the Civil War; 203 by the end of World War I; 1,158 at its height in 1990; and currently has 898 on active duty, according to the Navy. 'Today's Chaplain Corps includes Chaplains representing a multitude of faith groups, and the Chaplain Corps recruiting team is actively working to increase the Corps' diversity, with a special focus on increasing the number of women Chaplains in the Corps and the number of Chaplains representing low-density faith groups,' reads an Army historical booklet marking the Chaplain Corps' 250 years. Initially, U.S. military chaplains were Protestants. The first Catholic chaplains served in the Mexican-American War in 1846, and the first rabbi was commissioned in 1862 and served in the Civil War. The first Muslim chaplains were commissioned in the Army in 1993. The first Buddhist Army chaplain was named in 2008, followed by the first Hindu chaplain in 2011. Chaplain Margaret Kibben, acting chaplain of the House of Representatives and former chief of chaplains of the Navy — the first woman in that role — said the isolation and the immediacy of ethical decisions faced by military members, as well as a high level of confidentially, can make the work of military chaplaincy teams different from other settings where chaplains work. 'It's the one place that people can go where there's essentially a sanctuary around them, wherever they find themselves, a safe place to have somebody to talk to about a whole host of issues,' she said, adding that topics can include anything from supporting their families to handling combat responsibilities. 'How do you deal with those issues in a place where you're not going to look stupid, you're not going to look weak or unreliable because you have these doubts and you have these concerns — to have a place that you can go to ensure that you can get that off your chest?' Those private conversations often are not faith-filled, added Kibben, reflecting on her military career that began in 1986. 'What I realized later, 20, 30 years later, was that many service members have never learned the language of faith,' she said, citing terms like confession and forgiveness. 'So as a chaplain, we had to figure out our way around the lack of a lexicon of faith. How do you speak about grace to someone who doesn't have a clue how powerful grace is?' Another change, sparked by the efforts of Julie Moore, the wife of a military officer who served in the Vietnam War, was the Army's method for notifying the next of kin when a soldier died. Soon after a 1960s battle in that war, a chaplain and a uniformed officer began teaming up to knock on families' doors; prior to that time, the news arrived in a telegram delivered by a cab driver. The work of chaplains has sometimes been the source of church-state debates. For example, Michael 'Mikey' Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for separation of church and state in the U.S. military, has questioned what he viewed as proselytism in the chaplains' ranks. Meanwhile, conservative Christian organizations have voiced concerns about an antipathy against some Christians in military ranks. Karen Diefendorf, a two-time Army chaplain and a board member of the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps Regimental Association, which supports chaplains and their families, said the primary goal for chaplains is 'to provide for the free exercise rights of every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, Coast Guardsman.' She currently is an interim minister of an independent Methodist church in South Carolina, after serving as a chaplain at Tysons Foods and in hospice care. 'I had soldiers who were practitioners of Wiccan faith, and my job is not to say to them, 'Hey, wouldn't you like to love Jesus?'' she said, recalling how she assisted a Wiccan Army member serving in Korea. 'My job was to help that young soldier find where his particular group of folks met and where he could practice his faith.' Also during her service in Korea in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Diefendorf said she provided cassette tapes of sermons to soldiers and entrusted one with Communion elements because she knew she wouldn't be able to reach their location often. 'So far, the courts have upheld that you certainly have two competing clauses within the First Amendment, establishment and free exercise,' she said. 'And at this point, certainly chaplains have to walk that fine line not to create establishment in the midst of trying to also enable people to practice their beliefs.' Schaick recalled being deployed overseas in the Air Force when a new rabbi joined his staff. On arrival, the rabbi described himself as 'first and foremost a chaplain and secondarily a rabbi' — an order of priorities that Schaick said applies to chaplains to this day, regardless of their faith perspective. 'The longer you serve in the chaplaincy, I think the closer you get to really believing that — and therefore, religious affiliation becomes secondary,' he said. 'It's 'How're you doing today?' and 'I'd love to hear what's on your heart' and 'How can I be able to help you today?' Those kind of questions, quite frankly, are impervious to religious distinctions.' Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . 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Chicago Tribune
2 days ago
- Chicago Tribune
Column: On an August anniversary, memories of the atomic bomb from a crew member who dropped it on Nagasaki
I was sitting with an old soldier named Ray Gallagher. He held in his hands a small doll. The doll's name was Marianne and it was the doll that he took with him to war. It had been given to him by his niece, Margaret Gillund, and on Aug. 9, 1945, Marianne and Gallagher, an assistant flight engineer, boarded a plane named Bockscar along with 12 other men and a bomb called Fat Man and headed for the skies over the Japanese city of Nagasaki. They dropped the atomic bomb. In an instant, tens of thousands of people were reduced to ash. This was three days after another plane, the Enola Gay, and its crew dropped an atomic bomb named Little Boy on Hiroshima and, in an instant, tens of thousands more were ash. Accounting for those who died from the effects of radiation, it's estimated that as many as 70,000 died in Nagasaki and 140,000 in Hiroshima. T.S. Eliot famously called April the 'cruelest month,' but for me and many others, August grabbed that title in 1945 when the world was changed. Or, as Kurt Vonnegut put it in his 1963 novel 'Cat's Cradle,' 'The day the world ended.' Those who fought in World War II, or who worried for their loved ones who were fighting in WWII, are a diminishing crowd. And soon there will be none. But there were plenty in 1995 when I met Gallagher. He had come to the Union League Club to talk to some kids about the war. They were from local schools, gathered on a frigid Saturday morning to hear Gallagher say, 'War is awful, oh God. There's so much to be lost. When you go to war, you're not a hero. Everybody who goes to war would like to be brave. But you can be a coward. The whole idea of war is to get in and get out. Even now, when I enter a room, I'm looking at the windows and the doors … looking for the way to get out.' He came home from the war late in 1945, married his wife Mary, had two children, and settled into a quiet life in the Gage Park neighborhood and a long career with General Electric. (My father, a Marine, came home from fighting in the Pacific, too). There was a documentary film crew in the library. 'This is living history,' whispered a teacher in the room. It was the 50th anniversary year, memories from white-haired soldiers filled the pages of newspapers and TV screens. But by 1995 it was becoming increasingly controversial to mark the bombings with celebratory flag-waving. The dropping of those atomic bombs ushered in the chilling concept of doomsday, and in the ensuing decades, the dropping of the bombs ceased to be what Winston Churchill called 'a miracle of deliverance.' The film being made was called 'The Men Who Brought the Dawn.' Its director and producer, Jon Felt, said, '(We work to) put the viewer into the context of the times surrounding World War II and its final days, and hope to inform the public about the attitudes and personalities of the men who flew these missions. We do not get involved with ethics or moralities, politics or judgments. It is focused on the deeds of men.' Gallagher is in the film. He died in 1999, but is in my memory every August. He was 73 when I met him. Not a trained public speaker, he told what was essentially a series of anecdotes, random but potent. Eventually, it came time for questions, and a forest of tiny hands rose. 'Did the doll give you any luck?' asked a girl. 'It gave me the feeling of home,' Gallagher said, the doll cradled in his gnarled hands. 'If I wasn't thinking of home at the time all I had to do was look at Marianne. She always told me, 'You still have a home.'' Marianne went with him to an air base in Utah. He carried the doll with him on every training mission and to the island of Tinian in the Marianas, base of operations for the 509th Composite Bomb Group. Marianne was there in the sky over Nagasaki. After the bomb was dropped, after the war was over, Gallagher came home. Marianne came too and when Margaret Gillund grew up and became a school teacher, and when her history classes got around to World War II, Marianne went to school and was used as a powerful show-and-tell. Gillund was there at the Union League Club, along with Gallagher's wife. They heard him answer the question, 'Do you have regrets? Do you feel guilty?' Answer: 'I'd be lyin' if I didn't say I did. My wife Mary and myself have been invited back to Japan many times. I wouldn't go. I think we done a lot of good but we done a lot of bad … But we done what we were supposed to do.' Felt, the filmmaker, whispered to me, 'Ray is the most human gentleman I know.' Another question: 'Fifty years later, is it appropriate to reassess the decision to drop the bombs?' Gallagher answered: 'If someone hit you with a steel pipe would you shoot them with a gun? You had to live those years and walk those miles.' At the program's outset, Felt tried to help the kids' understanding by offering some musty statistics. He told of a Gallup Poll taken in late August 1945, weeks after the bombings. The poll asked people whether they approved or disapproved of the decision to drop the bombs. 'Eighty-five percent approved,' said Felt. He called an end to the question-and-answer session and asked that the kids remain in place so the crew could film a few more shots. Gallagher took a sip of water and received a loving pat on the back from his wife. One boy shouted, not a question but a statement: 'You were a killer.' Gallagher said, 'We had to drop 'em. There was a monster loose and that monster was war and we had to kill the monster.' With that, he removed himself from the wooden chair in which he had been sitting for three hours. He started to walk toward his wife and niece but stopped, turned around and walked back to a table on which the doll Marianne had been lying. He picked up the doll and asked, 'Was it OK? Did I do good?'
