GALLUP, NEW MEXICO — The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency positively identified the remains of U.S. Army Sgt. Celestino Chavez on April 15, 2025, nearly 75 years after the 19-year-old from New Mexico was killed in action during the Korean War. Chavez received a military burial with full honors in Gallup, New Mexico.

Chavez enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1949 at age 17 and was assigned to D Battery of the 15th Anti-Aircraft Artillery of the Automatic Weapons Battalion in the 7th Infantry Division. On Nov. 30, 1950, he was wounded while defending his position near the Chosin Reservoir in Korea. The agency described the Chosin Reservoir region in present-day North Korea as "the site of one of the most brutal battles between U.N. and Chinese Communist Forces" during the Korean War. About 30,000 United Nations soldiers and Marines fought against 120,000 enemy troops near the reservoir between late November and mid-December 1950. Over 1,000 U.S. service members were killed and thousands more were wounded during the battle.

According to his Silver Star citation, Chavez was struck and seriously wounded during the attack but refused to be evacuated because there was no other man available to replace him. He voluntarily remained at his post and continued firing his weapon despite his wound. After the enemy attack was broken up by accurate and intense fire, Chavez collapsed unconscious from blood loss and fell from the M-19 gun carriage to the ground. He was evacuated to an aid station.

Three days before he was wounded, Chavez wrote in a letter dated Nov. 27, 1950: "If anything happens to me, please mother, no tears." His mother, Lupita Chavez, said she last heard from her son on that date. On Dec. 2, 1950, Chavez was reported missing in action when his convoy was ambushed by opposing forces. There is no record of him being held as a prisoner of war, and he was declared presumed dead on Dec. 31, 1953.

Hundreds of service members were unable to be immediately recovered from the Chosin Reservoir area due to cold weather and the retreat of U.N. forces, according to the agency. Over the decades, the agency has conducted efforts to recover and identify remains of service members who died at the reservoir. In 2018, North Korea turned over 55 boxes believed to contain the remains of American service members who died in the Korean War, and the agency has been studying those remains to make further identifications. About 7,500 U.S. troops are believed to be unaccounted for from the war.

The agency identified Chavez's remains through anthropological analysis, circumstantial and material evidence, and multiple forms of DNA and genome testing. His family received a full briefing on the identification. Chavez's remains were transported to New Mexico, where members of the New Mexico National Guard Funeral Honors Team received his casket in Albuquerque.

Chavez was the only individual from Gallup to be unaccounted for in the Korean War. In addition to the Silver Star, he was awarded the Purple Heart and the Korean Service Medal with two Bronze Service Stars. He was survived by his mother and multiple step-siblings. His name, previously memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery in the Pacific, has been removed following the identification.