March 29, 2025 – Flag at half mast
Governor Maura Healey has ordered that the United States of America flag and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts flag be lowered to half-staff from sunrise until sunset on Saturday, March 29, 2025, the date of interment, in honor of Private First Class Joseph R. Travers of Taunton, Massachusetts, who served in the United State Army, Dog Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division during the Korean War.
The remains of Private First Class Joseph R. Travers, who passed while a prisoner of war in December of 1951, will be laid to rest in the Cedar Knoll Cemetery in East Taunton, Massachusetts.
On June 20, 2024, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of Private First Class Joseph Raymond Travers, missing from the Korean War.
On April 22, 1951, elements of the 24th Infantry Division, along with the 5th Regimental Combat Team (RCT), were dug into positions near Seoul, South Korea, where the Chinese Communist Forces (CCF) had regrouped and begun a large-scale effort to penetrate the valley areas east of Seoul. The 5th RCT was executing part of a blocking action known as Operation Dauntless, in which its 1st and 2nd Battalions launched an attack against CCF forces in the Chorwon Valley to the north. They pushed the enemy out of the area and set up defensive positions, but the CCF soon regrouped and returned with a massive counterattack. Pfc Travers was reported missing in action on April 22. In 1953, several returned POWs reported Pfc Travers had been a prisoner of war and died in December 1951 at Prisoner of War Camp 1 in Changsong, North Korea, on the bank of the Yalu River. However, his remains were not identified among those returned to U.S. custody after the war.
During Operation GLORY, the postwar exchange of war dead, remains from burial grounds around POW Camp 1 were returned to United Nations Command. Those remains that could not be identified were buried as Unknowns at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. In August 2019, as part of Phase Two of the Korean War Disinterment Plan, one set of these Unknown remains was exhumed and sent to a DPAA laboratory for further study. The laboratory analysis and the totality of the circumstantial evidence available established the remains as those of Pfc Travers.