American War Hero · Korean War · Notice Nearby
No rights-safe contemporary likeness is on file. The record is the service and the writing, not an invented face.
Keith E. Thomson
April 29, 1927 – unaccounted for since July 25, 1950 (died in captivity early January 1951)
Born Macomb, McDonough County, Illinois
Loss location: Hanjang-ni, North Korea (captivity death location; captured south of Kwangju, South Korea)
Ensign, U.S. Navy; Fighter Squadron 53 (VF-53), Carrier Air Group 5, USS Valley Forge (CV-45); F4U-4 Corsair bureau number 97103, armed reconnaissance over South Korea, July 25, 1950
Missing in action — DPAA lists Ens. Keith Edward Thomson as Unaccounted For (Deferred), profile a0Jt00000001V0bEAE (verified 2026-09-26). Corsair damaged by ground fire on a bridge attack north of Kwangju July 25, 1950; forced landing on a sandbar; captured before rescue; marched to Hanjang-ni on the Yalu; died of malnutrition in early January 1951; buried near the village; remains not identified among postwar returns. Memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific and on the Korean War Veterans Memorial Wall. Birth date and Macomb, Illinois, from Hall of Valor public record. Deferred is an analytic category, not a recovered grave.
Keith Edward Thomson was born in Macomb, Illinois, on April 29, 1927, and entered the Navy from that state. By July 1950 he was an ensign flying the F4U-4 Corsair with Fighter Squadron 53 off USS Valley Forge — the early carrier work that put single-seat fighters over the roads and bridges of South Korea while the war was still new.
On July 25 he took bureau number 97103 on a four-plane armed reconnaissance. Diving on a bridge north of Kwangju, his Corsair took hits and began leaking oil. He put it down on a sandbar south of the town and waited for rescue. Enemy troops overran the bar first. Thomson was captured, marched north with a large POW column, and held at Hanjang-ni on the Yalu. In early January 1951 he died there of malnutrition and was buried near the village. After the armistice his remains were not identified among those returned to American custody.
DPAA profile a0Jt00000001V0bEAE still lists him Unaccounted For, analytical category Deferred. He is on the Courts of the Missing in Honolulu and on the Korean War Veterans Memorial Wall. A camp burial note is not a grave this country has brought home.
- Publication
- NN-HERO-1950-022
- Content hash
- 57e8bce8 b7168595 b82df706 5cfbb3c6 4ad458e4 69bf4f89 33f037fc 3aa10fc8
- Base anchor
- 0x42deaa 91472837 c355e7c8 39ccc899 17e16a5b 017eacc7 fb315dbf 3cfd62a8 b0
Base stores the content hash, publication number, memorial id, and timestamp — not the full obituary text. The complete memorial remains on Notice Nearby. This is not a legal affidavit.