Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, May 26, 1990                   TAG: 9005260185
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

BY MEMORIAL DAY, 5 KOREA CASUALITIES MAY BE SENT HOME

Sunday, 39 years after the 27-year-old first lieutenant is believed to have died in a North Korean prison-of-war camp, he may finally be coming home.

Saunders' remains and those of a young Pennsylvania soldier who disappeared the day before Saunders in fighting near the village of Hoengsung are thought to be among the remains of five bodies the North Korean government has agreed to turn over to an American delegation on the eve of the Memorial Day holiday.

It is the first time since 1954 that North Korea will have repatriated any American remains, although the Defense Department estimates 8,177 Americans are unaccounted for from the three-year war. It killed 55,000 Americans, more than the much-longer Vietnam War.

"It will be final now," said LaRelle Basoco of San Bernardino, Calif., who married Saunders, her high-school sweetheart back in Ogden. "It seems like it has been up in the air all these years because we've had no body. This finalizes it."

"After 40 years it's a relief," she said Friday in a telephone interview. "I used to worry about it a lot after I remarried: that he would come back and what would I do, but it's a relief."

Army officials, acting on information released by the North Koreans more than two years ago, said Friday that they suspect the remains of Army Cpl. Arthur Leo Seaton of Chester, Pa., may also be among those returned this weekend.

The officials said they have been unable to find Seaton's relatives and have no idea who the other three servicemen may be. A knife, buttons and the two dogtags said to be with the remains have convinced North Korean officials that these are, in the words of the country's ambassador to the United Nations, "100 percent American." If relations with the United States improve, he said, his country will consider looking for more of the 1,200 remains believed easily recoverable.

Basoco, who remarried and moved to California about six years after her husband's presumed death, said Saunders had talked of making the military a career after he was recalled for the Korean War. He wanted to become a doctor and thought that the Army would put him through medical school if he remained in uniform, she said.

Her knowledge of his final days in Korea was slim. "He thought it was dirty over there and he didn't like it," she said. "He was anxious to get back. He didn't write too much about what the war was like because he didn't want to worry me."

On Feb. 13, 1951, Saunders was listed as missing in action after, his family says, his unit was overrun. The Army believes he died the following month and has long listed him as among those presumed dead. Insurance and other benefits were paid to his widow.