An Army private, who went missing in action nearly 80 years ago, has finally been identified after his body was exhumed in Italy and sent to the US for testing last year.
Wing O Hom, 20, of Boston, was serving in Company B, 7th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division when he was reported missing on Feb. 2, 1944, in Cisterna di Latina, roughly 45 miles outside of Rome, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA).
His body wasn’t discovered until 1946 in Ponte Rotto, three miles from Cisterna di Latina, by the American Graves Registration Company.
He was found with no identification and was transferred to the Central Identification Point in Nettuno.
Hom’s group had been engaged in “defensive fighting against the enemy” when he went missing, and the Germans never reported him as a prisoner of war, according to the DPAA.
Because Hom’s body had been left in a “fragmentary condition,” the agency was only able to identify him as an American soldier.
By May 1949, his remains were declared “non-recoverable” and the War Department declared him dead on Feb. 3, 1945, according to DPAA.
Hom’s body was taken to the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery, where he would lay until September 2021, when he was exhumed and sent to the DPAA laboratory on Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska for analysis, where they were able to positively identify him.
A DPAA historian eventually determined the remains, marked X-533 Nettuno, belonged to Hom using mitochondrial DNA and anthropological analysis.
He was formally identified on April 6 of this year.
Hom’s name will now be honored on the Walls of the Missing at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery in Nettuno.
A rosette will be placed by his name to show he has been accounted for, according to DPAA.
His body will be buried in Brooklyn on Oct. 11.
It is unclear if his remaining family plans on returning his body to Boston.
Earlier this month, a WWII sailor’s body was returned to New Jersey after nearly 80 years.
Anthony Di Petta, 24, of Nutley, was serving as a US Navy aviation ordnanceman when his plane was shot down by enemy fire in September 1944 and crashed into the Pacific Ocean, according to the Defense Department.
A search for him by the American Graves Registration Service ensued but was halted by 1947, and he was declared non-recoverable in July 1949.
The search was picked up again in 2003 by BentProp Project, now known as Project Recover.
Di Petta’s remains were discovered in 2015 and sent to Hawaii for analysis.
He was identified in January through dental records and mitochondrial DNA.
