Joe R. Baldonado

Joe Rodriguez Baldonado was the son of Mexican migrant workers in Colorado and went into the Army as a light-weapons infantryman and paratrooper. By November 1950 he was a corporal machine gunner in Company B, 1st Battalion, 187th Airborne Regiment, holding ground east and southeast of Pyongyang while Chinese forces opened their winter offensive.

On November 25, 1950, on Hill 171 near Kangdong, his platoon took a hard attack. The Medal of Honor citation — upgraded in 2014 after a review of Jewish and Hispanic recipients — records that he emplaced his machine gun in an exposed position, broke successive assaults, and kept firing until he was killed. DPAA's public file states his body was recovered and placed in a temporary grave in the U.N. Cemetery at Pyongyang; when the city fell back to enemy hands on December 5, those remains could not be extracted. He has not been identified among returns since.

DPAA profile a0Jt000000BFeDVEA1 still reads Unaccounted For, analytical category Deferred. He is on the Courts of the Missing in Honolulu and on the Korean War Veterans Memorial Wall. A temporary wartime burial that could not be recovered is not a closed grave in American custody. This register keeps the hill, the date, and the open ledger.