Updated Korean War memorial riddled with errors and accidental omissions
Cami Mondeaux
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The newly updated Wall of Remembrance at the Korean War memorial in Washington, D.C., contains hundreds of spelling errors and accidental omissions of deceased veterans, according to a new report.
The Korean War Veterans Memorial opened in July 1995 before receiving a remodel of its Wall of Remembrance last year. The $22 million project was dedicated on July 27, 2022, before a crowd of family members and friends as a way to honor those who died during the war.
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But upon a closer glance, some visitors began to notice glaring mistakes.
The Wall of Remembrance contains hundreds of misspelled names of the veterans who are listed on the memorial, according to an analysis from the Washington Post. For example, the last name of Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Ambrosio Guillen — who won the Medal of Honor for valor in 1954 after he died in battle on July 25, 1953 — was misspelled to read Guilien.
Navy helicopter pilot Lt. j.g. John Koelsch’s last name was also misspelled as Koelsh. Koelsch was shot down on July 3, 1951, while on a rescue mission and was later captured and died in captivity on Oct. 16, 1951. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism in 1955.
The Wall of Remembrance also included other errors, such as the inclusion of one veteran who reportedly survived the war. That name belongs to former Marine Alfred P. Bradshaw, who died in Missouri in 2012, according to the Washington Post.
“It makes my head hurt,” Hal Barker, a founder of the Korean War Project who helped identify the memorial’s mistakes, told the outlet. “The fact is we have a memorial that has a huge number of errors and no way of paying to fix it.”
Meanwhile, some visitors attended the memorial’s dedication despite knowing their family members who died during the war would not be listed on the wall, according to the outlet. Some names were omitted from inclusion because their deaths reportedly happened outside the direct war zone.
The errors on the wall were due to mistakes included on a list of names that was compiled by the Defense Department and then forwarded to the Interior Department to be given to the Korean War Veterans Memorial Foundation for the wall’s construction. It’s also likely the omissions were unintentionally made because of the military’s changing definition of who qualifies as a casualty of war.
Each of the respective military departments reviewed the names on the Korean War Casualty List and compared them with available military records to compile its lists of deceased war veterans, according to the Defense Department. However, it’s possible some confusion arose as it became “challenging” to determine whether a service member was killed in battle during the Korean War or the Cold War as the two conflicts overlapped, possibly causing some accidental omissions.
“The errors are a very unfortunate mistake, and the DOD is working in tandem with the Department of the Interior to correct those mistakes,” a spokesperson for the DOD told the Washington Examiner. “We encourage all family members or concerned citizens to notify the department of any names that were omitted, misspelled, or included in error.”
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The National Park Service, which maintains the memorial on the National Mall, said it would work with the Defense Department to address the errors.
“The National Park Service is honored to care for the Korean War Veterans Memorial, and we stand ready to support the Korean War Veterans Memorial Foundation and Department of Defense for any possible updates to the memorial they identify,” NPS spokesman Mike Litterst told the Washington Examiner.