Two Dallas brothers who have dedicated their lives to preserving Korean War history say at least 1,000 names are misspelled and at least 500 service members' names are missing on the new Korean War Veterans Memorial Wall of Remembrance in Washington, D.C.
“All of a sudden I started getting emails and phone calls saying, 'My relative's name is misspelled or not on the wall,' and that's unacceptable," said Ted Barker about the monument which was revealed last summer.
The Barkers, who runs a nonprofit called the Korean War Project out of their two-bedroom apartment in Dallas, said they've spent more than three decades collecting information and stories of those who served in the Korean War.
"This is a book that I created that has the actual correct names," said Hal Barker as he pointed to a stack of books. "This is the combination of tens of thousands of peoples' input."
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They created the Korean War Project website in 1995 to help bring Veterans of the Korean War along with their families, historians and other researchers together in one place to develop knowledge and information relating to the Korean War.
Their passion to learn about those who served in the Korean War, also called the Forgotten War, started two decades before.
“My brother started in 1979 to try and figure out what made our dad tick. He was a Marine Corps pilot officer and we had sort of a rocky relationship," described Ted.
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Their father didn't talk about his service in Korea, which is why the brothers set on a journey to learn more. They found out he was a Silver Star recipient at Heartbreak Ridge as a helicopter rescue pilot.
Their personal reasons morphed into something larger than just their family. Now, they're turning their attention to the monument on the National Mall they say needs to be fixed.
"Many of the names are misspelled, especially Hispanic, Puerto Rican, Eastern European, Hawaiian and Japanese. There were problems going back to the war itself where they spelled their names wrong," explained Hal, who is also a historian.
He said through their research over the last 30 years, they've been able to correct names.
“If they had just talked to us and worked with us, we could have saved the United States taxpayers probably $10 [million] to $15 million, because that's what it's going to take to redo this," said Ted, with regard to the government and the group that oversaw the construction.
The Korean War Veterans Memorial Foundation had oversight on the new memorial, but the list of names came from the Korean War Casualty list, which is from the Department of Defense and was forwarded to the Department of the Interior.
In a statement, the DOD said, "The errors are a very unfortunate mistake and the DOD is working in tandem with the Dept. of Interior to correct those mistakes. We are also aware that some names are on the Wall of Remembrance which were not included on the Department’s final list of Korean War casualties."
A spokesperson for the DOD said while respective military departments reviewed every name against official military records, "Though not common, the official records themselves may have contained errors making this review challenging. Additionally challenging was determining if a deceased service member that was previously considered a Cold War era loss should be re-categorized as a Korean War loss."
They said they encourage family members or those who are concerned to notify the DOD of any names that were either omitted, misspelled, or included in error.
The Barkers said they warned government officials years ago when the project was originally starting and offered to help.
“Bottom line they should have done this six years ago, when they asked us to help them. We never heard back from them," said Ted.
“Well, we gave them the names free of charge. They had the books," said Hal.
When asked if the DOD would be reaching out to the Barkers for help, in a statement the department said, "The Barkers have provided valuable assistance to the Department on a number of occasions in the past, and DOD is currently reviewing [the] information provided by the Barkers to determine if any changes to the Korean War Casualty records is warranted."
"If you’re killed or died in a war, people need to know what your name was so they can find you and memorialize you properly, a name is everything that we have," said Ted.
More than 36,000 Americans died in the Korean War.
