Remains of MIA soldier buried in Hawaii are returning home

BOSTON >> The remains of an Army medic from Massachusetts who was reported missing in action during the Korean War in 1950 are returning home for burial, military officials said today.

Cpl. Jules Hauterman Jr. is scheduled to be buried in Holyoke on March 31 with full military honors, according to the Pentagon’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

Hauterman, of Hampden, will be buried in the family plot with his parents and sister, said David Stuntz, whose 94-year-old mother is Hauterman’s cousin.

“This means a great deal to my mother because the family is complete again,” Stuntz said. “My mother is his closest living relative.”

Stuntz, who was a child when Hauterman went missing, has no memories of him but remembers vague family stories.

“He was a nice young man, I heard, and when he died, his mother withdrew, went into her own cave,” he said.

Hauterman was 19 years old when he was reported missing in action during the fighting withdrawal of the 31st Regimental Combat Team from the Chosin Reservoir in December 1950, military officials said.

More than 1,300 Americans, pursued by the Chinese army, were captured or killed.

Neither the Chinese nor the North Korean armies listed Hauterman as a prisoner, and no returning American POWs reported any information about him, so he was declared dead.

Remains recovered from the reservoir area in 1954 were declared unidentifiable and buried the next year in Hawaii.

Those remains were disinterred last June and were sent to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency’s lab for analysis.

Dental and anthropological analysis and circumstantial evidence matched Hauterman’s records.

The Accounting Agency said 7,757 Americans remain unaccounted for from the Korean War.