He was 'excitedly awaiting' a return from the Korean War in 1950. He finally will in 2025

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26-05-2025

Six months before he went missing after a battle in the Korean War, Byron Brock was looking homeward.
A U.S. Army sergeant, Brock had already sent a footlocker of his belongings back to his mother's home on Flower Street in Phoenix.
'I have packed all my belongings in my bags and am excitedly awaiting my Orders to go home,' he wrote in a July 20, 1950, letter to his mother. 'It has been a long time since I last saw the Motherland.'
He never would see his hometown of Phoenix again. He went missing after his unit was forced to retreat from Hagaru-ri, North Korea, during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in 1950.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Army identified his remains using modern scientific methods and contacted family members. It resolved a question that had lingered for three-quarters of a century and allowed the Army to formally and officially account for James Byron Brock, known to his family by his middle name.
For Amy Fernandez, it rekindled stories of the uncle she never met, but knew from stories told by her grandmother Julia Brock Skousen, Byron's mother.
'He was always talked about in my mom's family,' Fernandez said. The tales were detailed and frequent — Amy's grandmother lived next door and although Julia had seven other children, Byron, her youngest child from her first marriage, was always on her mind.
'It tortured her for decades because she let him go,' Fernandez said. Julia had to sign for her son to enter the Army because he was only 16 years old, Fernandez said, recounting family lore.
Her grandmother blamed herself for his demise, and rejected overtures from the military to compensate her for her loss.
'She was so funny, so old and stubborn, she refused it,' Fernandez said of the offer of a Purple Heart to honor Byron. 'It was like blood money.'
Money the Army sent as a form of reparation was used to buy a set of dressers, which Julia gave to one of her daughters. They're still in the family today.
Fernandez shared a photo of a young Byron, his cap angled jauntily on his head. The photo hung in her grandmother's home for years. On the back was Byron's typewritten letter, where he complained about the steamy heat in Korea and mused that the rain his post got in 15 minutes would equal what Phoenix gets in a year.
'I have sent another foot locker with some more of my civilian cloths in it,' he wrote. 'It will probably get to you about the fifteenth of August.'
He closed by sending his love to his family 'and tell them that I will be coming home in the very near future.'
Brock was reported missing in December 1950. In 1951, he was listed as missing in action. A two-paragraph story in The Arizona Republic on March 29, 1954, stated he was presumed dead.
But on Jan. 29 this year, the federal Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced in a press release that he had been accounted for.
Brock was a member of Company I, 3rd Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division. He was among the many soldiers who were reported missing in action following a roll call at Hamhung on Dec. 12, 1950, after the battle, one of the most significant of the Korean War.
The Chosin Reservoir Battle erupted during a brutal winter in 1950, after the Chinese Communist Forces launched an attack against the U.S. and United Nations troops near the Chosin Reservoir, a man-made lake also known as Changjin Lake, located in the northwest of South Hamgyong Province.
U.S. and U.N. troops were outnumbered four-to-one and isolated in the desolate snow-packed mountain area. Brock's regiment was among the troops forced to withdraw to a defensive perimeter at Hagaru-ri and then fall back to Hamhung to be evacuated by sea.
Troops faced 'annihilation,' cut off from land supply and suffering in the 'bitter cold of the Korean winter,' according to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force.
They also faced 'roadblocks, ambushes, blown bridges' as they retreated, said the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency in the press release.
The treacherous way back to the port city of Hungnam was 70 miles away on an icy road in subzero temperatures, according to the U.S. Marines. Ground forces suffered more than 5,000 combat casualties and thousands more suffered from frostbite and illness, according to the U.S. Naval Museum.
After the end of the war, North Korea returned remains recovered from Changson, also known as Prisoner of War Camp #1, in the fall of 1953 during Operation Glory. When Brock could not be identified as part of those remains, a presumptive finding of death was issued on March 10, 1954, according to the MIA/POW Accounting Agency.
Two years later, all remains that could not be identified with the tools available at the time were buried as unknowns in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii, known as the Punchbowl. Among those remaining was one labeled X-15881.
Almost seven decades later, in 2018, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency disinterred 652 'Korean War unknowns' from the Punchbowl, the agency said. Among those were remains X-15881, which were analyzed with modern technology and identified as Brock's remains.
Scientists used dental and anthropological analysis, circumstantial evidence, mitochondrial DNA, and mitochondrial genome sequence analysis to identify his remains, the agency said.
Brock's name and others missing from the Korean War are recorded on the Courts of the Missing at the Punchbowl. The agency said a rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.
Funeral and burial plans have yet to be decided.
Brock's nephew Robert "Woody" Brock — the son of Brock's older brother — is heading up final plans, Fernandez said.
The Army told the family that Brock is entitled to a military burial in a national cemetery.
But Fernandez wonders if her grandmother would have other ideas.
'She would say, the Army's had him long enough,' Fernandez said. Perhaps he should come home to the place where he grew up.
'Maybe he should be buried next to Granny,' she said.
Julia is buried at the Greenwood Memory Lawn Mortuary and Cemetery west of downtown Phoenix, she said, adding that other family members are also interred there.
Reach the reporter at [e-mail].
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Military identifies remains of Phoenix native killed in Korea in 1950