This is something that we are really good about, which when remains are found surviving family members are extremely appreciative:

U.S. military excavators are hoping the discovery of human remains and a pen in this remote farming village can help them write the final chapter in the lives of as many as five American soldiers lost during the Korean War.

After only a few days of digging into a “burial mound” found along a route believed to be used for prisoner-of-war marches during the conflict, the team from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command has turned up finger bone fragments, bullets and casings, buttons, a boot eyelet and a Parker pen.

“Of course, in the ’40s and ’50s, a lot of soldiers carried fountain pens with them … and that was their main means of communicating with their family,” said Jay Silverstein, a JPAC anthropologist overseeing the dig about eight miles from the border with North Korea. “So, it is very common to find a fountain pen with American soldiers from World War II and the Korean War.”

Since it was formed in 2005, JPAC — which is based at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii — has found and identified the remains of more than 90 servicemembers originally listed as missing or unaccounted for after the Korean War, which ran from 1950 to 1953.

JPAC’s 12-member excavation team came to Hwacheon this month because a preliminary investigation a year ago determined there was a strong likelihood that American soldiers might have been buried here.  [Stars & Stripes]

Over 8,000 American servicemembers remaining missing in action from the Korean War with roughly 2,000 of them suspected of being buried in South Korea.

I can remember doing a funeral detail a few years back for a family who had remains recovered of a relative from World War II.  During the funeral the soldiers 91 year old sister was on hand and cried as if the soldier had died a day prior.  She and the rest of her family really appreciated that the US found her brother, brought him back to the US, and then gave him a full military funeral.  That is what convinced me that recovering these remains should remain a priority.