The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced earlier in July that U.S. Army Pvt. Wing O. Hom, 20, of Boston, Massachusetts, missing in action during World War II, was accounted for April 6, 2023.
In February 1944, Hom was assigned to the Company B, 7th Infantry Regiment, 3d Infantry Division. On Feb. 2, Hom went missing in action when his unit engaged in defensive fighting against German Forces near the town of Cisterna di Latina, Italy. His body was not recovered, and the Germans never reported him a prisoner of war. The War Department issued a finding of death on Feb. 3, 1945.
Following the war, the American Graves Registration Command (AGRC), Army Quartermaster Corps, was the organization tasked with recovering missing American personnel in the European Theater. In 1946, AGRC investigators recovered a set of remains designated as X-541 Nettuno, three miles west of Cisterna thought to be associated with Hom.
The investigators didn’t have enough identifying data to positively ID the remains and they were interred at USMC Nettuno, which is now Sicily-Rome American Cemetery. He was declared non-recoverable May 10, 1949.
While studying unresolved American losses in the Anzio battlefield, a DPAA historian determined that one set of unidentified remains designated X-541 Nettuno recovered near Cisterna in September 1944, possibly belonged to Hom. The remains which had been buried at Sicily-Rome American Cemetery, Nettuna, Italy in 1948, were disinterred in September 2021 and sent to the DPAA laboratory at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, for identification.
To identify Hom remains, scientists from DPAA used anthropological analysis. Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), analysis.
Hom’s name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at Sicily-Rome American Cemetery an American Battle Monuments Commission site in Nettuno, Italy, along with others still missing from WWII. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.
Hom will be buried in Brooklyn, New York on Oct. 11, 2023.
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