Photos of the Week: 74 Years Later, Army Corporal Returns Home from Korea

Delberta Cuppett wasn’t expecting a phone call from the military this past July.

But when she picked up the phone, an officer on the other end told her the news her family had been waiting 74 years to hear: They had found and identified the remains of her oldest brother, Cpl. Howard Godwin Jr., lost in the Korean War in 1950.

“It was such a shock and then the excitement of knowing he was found after all these years,” Cuppett, 82, of Chillicothe, Ohio, said. “Seventy-four years of mourning for him – to have closure is what our family needed. … It doesn’t make it any easier but now he’s been laid to rest at the National Cemetery in Grafton (West Virginia).”

Godwin arrived at Pittsburgh International Airport earlier this month enroute to his final resting place in his hometown of Grafton. Family members met the casket as part of a ceremony as it was escorted from the plane. PIT firefighters and Allegheny County Police participated as part of the honor guard along with military escorts.

Dianna Brinker, 80, another sister of Godwin’s, was among the among the family to greet the plane.

“When I saw that plane coming in all of a sudden (the moment) hit me – my brother is on that plane,” said Brinker, of Pine Grove, West Virginia. “When I saw his casket with the flag coming off, I thought, ‘It really is him. He’s really home.’

“When the plane landed, I thought about my mom. She used to say, ‘One of these days they’re going to find your brother,’” Brinker said. “And I felt my mom there beside me. It was strange; I can’t explain it, but I felt her there with me.”

In July 1950, Godwin, 22, was a member of A Company, 1st Battalion, 34th Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division. He was reported missing in action on July 20 while fighting North Korean forces in the vicinity of Taejon, South Korea. He was never found, nor were any remains recovered that could be identified. Godwin was declared non-recoverable in January 1956, according to the military.

On Jan. 1, 1951, three sets of remains were recovered three miles northwest of Taejon near where Godwin’s unit was fighting. Two of the three remains were identified at the time, but investigators could not make a scientific identification of the third. Those remains were designated as unknown X-351 and were later transported with all of the unidentified Korean War remains and buried as unknowns at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu.

In July 2018, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) historians and anthropologists proposed a plan to disinter and identify the 652 Korean War unknown burials from the Punchbowl. X-351 was disinterred July 15, 2019, as part of Phase 1 of the Korean War Identification Project and transferred to the DPAA Laboratory.

To identify Godwin’s remains, scientists used dental and anthropological analysis, as well as chest radiograph comparison. Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA analysis.

“My brother Ronald and I had given DNA years ago (for potential identification purposes) to the military, but we hadn’t heard anything,” Cuppett said.

Cuppett said Howard was the oldest of six children of Estel and Howard Godwin Sr. Three of the siblings remain.

“We were worried that we’d all be gone before he was found,” Cuppett said. “My mom never lost hope that he would be found. When they first told our parents that he was missing, they said he could have been captured.

“My mother thought all these years – she thought maybe they’ll be a knock at the door, and it would be him. She thought that until the day she died,” Cuppett said. “My mom and dad wrote many letters to the Army over the years trying to get more information.”

Estel Godwin died in 1997 never knowing for certain the whereabouts of her son.

“He was a wonderful brother,” said Cuppett, who was 6 when her oldest brother volunteered for the Army at age 20. “Being a little kid, I looked up to him. … (After he was gone) it was hard as a child, but I held onto hope like my mom that someday he’d come back.”

Godwin’s name is recorded on the American Battle Monument Commission’s Courts of the Missing at the Punchbowl, along with the others who are still missing from the Korean War. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.