A new monument to Iowa’s Korean War veterans will be dedicated on June 1 in Cedar Rapids. Mike Jager, the city’s Veterans Memorial director, say the monument will be inscribed with the names of 507 Iowa natives who were killed in the conflict or listed as missing in action according to official federal records.
Jager described the monument as square and about six-and-a-half feet high. It will be placed in Veterans Memorial Park in Cedar Rapids, just outside the Veterans Memorial baseball stadium. The Korean War began in June 1950 and ended in July 1953.
“Often times the Korean War is called the forgotten war as it came between World War Two and Vietnam,” Jager said. “We just wanted to make sure the Korean War and the sacrifices of those veterans was not forgotten here in Cedar Rapids.”
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell will be among the speakers at the June 1 dedication. His visit and the monument are both being paid for by P-M-X Industries, a Cedar Rapids subsidiary of a company based in Korea.
P-M-X specializes in the production of copper and copper alloys. Jager says more than 700 Iowans may have been killed in the Korean War, but the government has only been able to officially identify 507.