Korean War

Philadelphia, PA

This towering steel barrel once formed the center gun of Turret 1 aboard the USS New Jersey, an Iowa-class battleship that stands today as a museum ship on the Camden waterfront across from Philadelphia. Each of these 16-inch guns could hurl a shell weighing as much as a small car more than 20 miles, and this one spoke in two very different wars — bombarding enemy positions in the Pacific during World War II, then again off the Korean coast a decade later. A single artifact like this collapses the distance between the factory floor of American industrial power and the far shores where that power was felt.

Auburn, WA

This marker remembers 1st Lt. Edward J. Moloney, an Auburn High School graduate and student body president in 1944 who served as a U.S. Army paratrooper with the 187th Regimental Combat Team and was killed in action in Korea on May 28, 1951. The 187th RCT was one of the war's storied airborne units, and Moloney's story traces a familiar arc from hometown campus leader to combat officer.

Abilene, TX

The 45th Infantry Division — the 'Thunderbirds,' drawn from National Guard units in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Oklahoma — was among the first divisions called into federal service in 1940 and relocated to Camp Barkeley near Abilene in early 1941. Finding the camp little more than a tent city on undrained prairie, the soldiers nicknamed it 'Camp Smokey Okie' and trained hard before shipping out through North Africa to Europe. Across 511 days of combat in Sicily, Italy, France, and Germany they earned eight Medals of Honor and helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp in April 1945; the division was recalled for the Korean War, where it suffered further heavy losses.

Weymouth, MA

This Weymouth square honors Master Sergeant Aime M. Arsenault, a career U.S. Army soldier who survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and went on to serve through World War II and the Korean War. Survivors of Pearl Harbor carried firsthand memory of the day that thrust the United States into global war, and hometowns later dedicated squares and plaques to keep their service in public view. Arsenault lived from 1922 to 1995, a lifetime that spanned the nation's mid-century conflicts.

Bryan, TX

Rising from displaced farmland in 1942, Bryan Army Air Field became a key World War II training ground—home to the nation's only instrument-instructor school for a time, more than a thousand Women Airforce Service Pilots, and a segregated corps of African American servicemen. From here Col. Joseph Duckworth made the first intentional flight into a hurricane in 1943. Reactivated for the Korean War as a racially integrated jet-training base, it trained Tuskegee airmen, foreign pilots, and future astronauts before its land became part of Texas A&M University.

Cohasset, MA

In towns across Massachusetts, ordinary street corners were quietly renamed after local sons who did not come home from war — a New England tradition of honoring the fallen where neighbors pass every day. This square in Cohasset carries the name of C. David Strout alongside the word "Korea," marking his service in the war that raged on that divided peninsula from 1950 to 1953. Such dedications turn a familiar intersection into a small, permanent act of civic memory.

Merced County, CA

This memorial honors the Californians who served in the Korean War, the brutal 1950–1953 conflict that erupted when North Korean forces swept across the 38th parallel and drew the United States into the first armed clash of the Cold War. Often called "The Forgotten War" because it fell between the vast mobilization of World War II and the long agony of Vietnam, it nonetheless claimed more than 36,000 American lives and ended not in victory but in an armistice that left Korea divided to this day. Memorials like this one gather the names and sacrifice of a state's veterans so that a war easily overlooked in textbooks stays present in the landscape.

Oil City, PA · est. 2011

Born in the oil-country town of Oil City to Polish immigrant parents, Francis "Gabby" Gabreski became one of America's greatest fighter pilots. Flying in World War II and again in the Korean War, he ranked among the nation's leading aces and, as a squadron commander, passed his hard-won combat tactics on to the pilots under him. His skill and valor earned him high decorations from the United States and its allies.

Dublin, TX

Born in Dublin in 1920, George A. Davis, Jr. was one of six brothers who served in the military. He enlisted as an aviation cadet in 1942, flew hundreds of missions as an early P-47 Thunderbolt pilot in World War II, and became a leading jet Ace in Korea with the 334th Fighter Interceptor Squadron. On February 10, 1952, near the Manchurian border, he downed two MiG-15s before his own SabreJet was hit and crashed south of the Yalu River. He received the Medal of Honor posthumously.

Brookfield, IL

Dedicated in 1964 and anchored by an F-86 Sabre jet, this monument in Ehlert Park honors those who served in the Korean Conflict between 1950 and 1953. The Sabre was the iconic American fighter of that war, dueling MiGs in the skies over the Korean peninsula. Local veterans' groups—the American Legion, VFW, Moose, and AMVETS—joined to raise the memorial for their community's servicemen and women.

Tybee Island, GA

At the eastern tip of Tybee Island, where U.S. Route 80 finally runs out of continent at the Atlantic, this marker names the highway in honor of America's Korean War veterans. Dedicated in 2008 by the Republic of Korea and a grateful nation, it commemorates the roughly 1.8 million Americans who served in the 1950–1953 conflict often called the "Forgotten War." The route's dramatic end at the ocean makes a fitting place to remember those who fought half a world away.

Bedford, MA

The F-86 Sabre was America's first swept-wing jet fighter and the iconic warplane of the Korean War, where its pilots dueled Soviet-built MiG-15s in the stretch of sky along the Yalu River that airmen nicknamed "MiG Alley." Sleek, fast, and a leap beyond the straight-winged fighters that came before it, the Sabre helped the U.S. Air Force win control of the air in the first great jet-versus-jet conflict in history. A static display like this one preserves a machine that carried American airpower into the jet age and lets visitors stand beneath a shape that once screamed across Korean skies.

Laurel County, KY

Carl H. Dodd, born in Harlan County, Kentucky, served with Company E, 5th Regimental Combat Team in the Korean War. In January 1951, near Subuk, he led the capture of Hill 256, a key piece of terrain, with what the citation called "utter disregard for his safety." President Harry S. Truman presented him the Medal of Honor in May 1951; Dodd rose to major before retiring in 1965 and spent his last decades in Laurel County.

Victoria, TX

As the United States raced to build an air force before entering World War II, Victoria secured an advanced aerial gunnery training field, opened in 1941 and named for a young instructor killed in a 1925 crash. Cadets trained here throughout the war, firing over ranges on the Matagorda coast, and the base even hosted the Aztec Eagles — Mexico's 201st Fighter Squadron — as Allied fliers trained side by side. Closed at war's end, it was reactivated for jet training during the Korean War, became a permanent Air Force base, and finally passed into civilian hands as Victoria's regional airport.

Seattle, WA

Dedicated on Memorial Day in 1951, this grove honors American service members who gave their lives fighting under the United Nations banner. In 1951 that fight was the Korean War, where U.S. troops formed the core of a UN coalition defending South Korea. The living memorial was planted as a place of quiet remembrance for those losses.

O'Hara Township, PA · est. 1999

Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway commanded the 82nd Airborne Division during its World War II campaigns, including the invasion of Sicily, before leading the XVIII Airborne Corps into the war's final year. In 1951 he took over United Nations forces in Korea and soon rose to supreme Allied commander in Europe and then Army Chief of Staff, where he cautioned against reliance on massive nuclear retaliation. In 1989 the Ridgway International Peace Shrine was dedicated here in his honor.

Fort Worth, TX

Born in Fort Worth in 1926, George Herman O'Brien, Jr. served in the Merchant Marine, earned a geology degree from Texas Tech, and was called to active Marine Corps duty after war broke out in Korea. On October 27, 1952, ordered to retake a vital hill known as the Hook near the 38th parallel, Second Lieutenant O'Brien spearheaded a four-hour assault—much of it hand-to-hand—pressing the attack despite repeated wounds before setting a defense and tending his men. For that valor he received the Medal of Honor, later returning to Texas to work as a petroleum geologist.

Harlingen, TX

As World War II approached, Harlingen offered the Army 960 acres of its flat coastal plain — useless for artillery but ideal for aircraft — and in August 1941 the Harlingen Army Gunnery School took its first students. At its peak the base trained up to 9,000 airmen, among them Women Airforce Service Pilots, before closing in 1946. Reactivated during the Korean War as Harlingen Air Force Base, it trained more than 13,000 navigators until its 1962 closure dealt the local economy a heavy blow; its grounds now serve an airport, museums, and schools.

Dougherty County, GA

This sign marks a community named in honor of Major General William Pendleton Thompson Hill, who served as the Marine Corps' Quartermaster General from 1944 to 1955. That decade spanned the final years of World War II and the Korean War, an era when the Corps expanded and modernized rapidly and its supply operations had to keep pace with Marines fighting across the Pacific and in Korea. As Quartermaster General, an officer in that post was responsible for equipping, clothing, and provisioning the force — the unglamorous logistical work that keeps an expeditionary military in the field.

Amory, MS

This memorial in Amory honors local men who served in the Korean War, the hard-fought conflict of 1950–1953 that Americans sometimes called the 'Forgotten War.' Its stark dedication — 'their lives for our freedom' — speaks for the soldiers from small Mississippi towns who shipped out to a cold, distant peninsula. Communities across the South raised such markers to ensure that sacrifice in a war overshadowed by others would not be forgotten at home.

Revere, MA

This memorial in Revere honors those who gave their lives in the service of the nation during the Korean War, the hard, often overlooked conflict of 1950–1953. Fought to a bloody stalemate on the Korean peninsula, it drew a generation of American servicemen so soon after World War II that it came to be called the 'Forgotten War.' This plaque refuses that forgetting for the community's own fallen.

Mankato, MN

This memorial in Mankato honors the Americans who served in the Korean War of 1950–1953, the conflict that erupted when North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel and drew the United States into a United Nations coalition on the peninsula. Often called the "Forgotten War," it ended in an armistice rather than a formal peace, leaving Korea divided to this day. Communities across Minnesota and the nation raised such markers to keep the service of that generation in public memory.

Olympia, WA

This memorial in Olympia lists Washingtonians killed in the Korean War of 1950–1953, the bitter conflict fought to halt the invasion of South Korea. Often called "The Forgotten War" because it fell between the vast mobilization of World War II and the turmoil of Vietnam, Korea nonetheless cost tens of thousands of American lives. The memorial gathers those state losses in one place of remembrance.

Bowling Green, OH

This memorial in Bowling Green honors the Americans who served in the Korean War, the sharp and costly conflict that erupted in June 1950 when North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel and drew the United States and United Nations allies into three years of grueling fighting on the Korean peninsula. Often overshadowed by the world war that preceded it and the Vietnam War that followed, the conflict ended in a 1953 armistice that left Korea divided along nearly the same line where the fighting began. Some 36,000 Americans died before the guns fell silent, many of them young men from small Ohio towns like this one.

Mount Pleasant, MI

This memorial marks the Korean War of 1950–1953, when American troops joined a UN force to repel the invasion of South Korea. Its "Freedom is not free" inscription echoes a phrase that came to define remembrance of a conflict often called the "Forgotten War."

Port Townsend, WA

This memorial honors the men and women of Jefferson County who served in the Korean War, and especially those who never came home. Fought from 1950 to 1953, the conflict pulled a generation of Americans into a hard, cold war on a distant peninsula soon after the end of World War II. The monument keeps their sacrifice from being forgotten.

Fort Hancock, TX

Benito Martinez grew up in the tiny border town of Fort Hancock, graduating from its high school in 1951 before shipping out to Korea. On September 6, 1952, near Satae-Ri, the young corporal made a lone six-hour stand, refusing offers of rescue so his unit could regain vital ground—an act of valor that cost him his life. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration.

Southington, CT

This monument honors the residents of Southington, Connecticut who served in the nation's three great mid-twentieth-century conflicts: World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam Conflict. Together these wars swept up a generation of small-town Americans, sending men and women from a modest Connecticut manufacturing community to Europe, the Pacific, the Korean peninsula, and Southeast Asia. Memorials like this one became a fixture of New England town greens in the postwar decades, a communal way to keep the names and sacrifices of neighbors present in daily civic life.

Uvalde, TX

Commissioned in 1944, the USS Uvalde was a C-2 type Navy cargo ship built in Oakland and named to honor former Vice President John Nance Garner and his home county. She served in the Pacific during World War II, carried troops and cargo to occupation outposts, and later supported United Nations forces in the Korean War before being reactivated during the Cold War tensions of the Berlin and Cuban Missile crises. Decommissioned in 1968, she left her anchor and bell to the city of Uvalde, displayed here in memory of the ship and her crew.

Auburn, MA

In the small central-Massachusetts town of Auburn, this riverside park was set aside to honor local residents who served in the Second World War and the Korean Conflict. Communities across New England raised memorials like this one in the years after 1945, when nearly every town had sent its sons and daughters overseas and wanted a permanent, public place to remember them. Naming the park for Water Street roots that national sacrifice in a specific neighborhood, turning an ordinary green space into a place of civic memory.

Columbia City, IN

This memorial honors the men of Whitley County who died in the Korean War (1950–1953), the hard-fought conflict on the divided peninsula that Americans often called the "Korean Conflict." Four local names are inscribed here, each a young life given in a war fought far from the Indiana farm country they called home.

Center Township, OH

Between 1950 and 1953, Americans from every county in the nation shipped out to fight in Korea, a brutal conflict often overshadowed in memory as "the Forgotten War." This memorial, raised in the year 2000, gathers the names and service of Wood County's own into a lasting tribute. Simple in its words — "In Honor Of All" — it insists that the sacrifice of these local veterans not be forgotten.

Northbridge, MA

This memorial preserves the names of Northbridge, Massachusetts residents who served in World War II and the Korean War — the generation that fought fascism overseas in the 1940s and then, barely five years later, answered the call again on the Korean peninsula. Small New England mill towns like Northbridge sent an outsized share of their young men into both conflicts. Listing them together bridges the 'Greatest Generation' and the Cold War's first hot war.