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The remains of an American World War II veteran who died while serving in the Korean War have been identified thanks to an old photograph after newer forensic techniques came up short, U.S. military officials revealed on Thursday.
U.S. Army Sgt. Roger Duquesne, 25, was assigned to A Company, 89th Medium Tank Battalion, 25th Infantry Division in September 1950, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. On September 3, he was reported missing in action while fighting North Korean forces near Masan, Korea, which is now part of South Korea. Duquesne disappeared while searching for a spare-parts kit, the DPAA said. He was declared dead on Dec. 31, 1953.
Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency
Typically, the DPAA uses forensic technology and historical research to identify the remains of fallen soldiers. But a set of remains buried as a Korean War Unknown defied that process. The remains were recovered near South Korea’s Naktong River in September 1950, and buried as unknown at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1956. The remains were disinterred in October 2011.
The remains underwent multiple examinations. Attempts to find a familial DNA match failed. Dental records were checked, but there were few distinguishing features to be compared. Many Korean War cases involve the use of chest radiographs, the DPAA said, but no such records existed for these remains.
DPAA workers turned their attention to a forensic method known as craniofacial superimposition. The method compares a photograph of a person believed to be missing with images of the skull being identified. The method is somewhat outdated and University of Queensland associate professor Carl Stephan said in a DPAA news release that it has “always had some scientific hurdles,” including photographic distortion, but new advances in video technology have helped make it more accurate .
Stephan, who specializes in craniofacial identification methods, worked with the DPAA to see if the method could identify the unknown remains. DPAA investigators compared an photo of Duquesne when he was alive to the skull. In one image, Duquesne was wearing a military dress hat, which could be used as a reference object to determine where to place the camera.
Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency 
“You’ll find no match, no match, no match,” Stephan said in the DPAA news release, “then a sweet spot, and then no match again. That tells you how far the camera needs to be away from the reference object.”
Once the camera’s distance had been confirmed, DPAA investigators carefully positioned the skull so it matched the pose of Duquesne’s face in the image. A photo of Duquesne’s face overlaid on the skull was taken and studied for “anatomical consistency,” the DPAA said. The “most compelling evidence” came from the teeth: In the photo, Duquesne is smiling and showing his upper teeth, including a prominent upper canine that throws a shadow across other teeth. When the skull was positioned correctly, the same shadow was produced.
“That’s one of the decisive things that indicates this is a match,” Stephan said.
Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency 
DPAA investigators also used historical records and excluded all other possible candidates to ensure the remains were correctly identified as Duquesne’s. The DPAA said the case is now “a clear example of how older forensic techniques can be refined rather than discarded, and how careful science, applied thoughtfully, can still bring clarity and answers to even the most difficult identifications decades after the fact.”
Duquesne’s remains were accounted for by the DPAA in September, but the agency only detailed the process that led to it this week. He has been memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific and the Korean War Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.
According to the DPAA, the remains of more than 450 Americans killed in the Korean War have been identified and returned to their families since 1982, and about 7,000 Americans are still unaccounted-for from the war.
