Sally Pier last saw her older brother, Pfc. Domenico "Nick" Di Salvo, as the 20-year-old Marine from Ohio prepared to board a train in 1950 on his way to combat in Korea.

He was cut down in a hail of bullets in December of that year on the west side of the Chosin Reservoir near Yudam-ni as three Chinese divisions bore down on U.S. positions.

But for 57 years there was no confirmation, no body to bury, no grave to visit and no closure for the Di Salvo family.

The family never knew, until April, that Di Salvo's remains had been turned over by North Korea to the United States in 1954, and that he was later buried as an "unknown" at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl.

Two siblings "would go to church every morning, 6 o'clock Mass, for my brother, every morning for years," Pier recalled.

Another sister, Loretta Macken, came closest to her brother when she visited Punchbowl about 25 years ago and ran her hand over his name on a monument, not knowing that he lay nearby.

The loss tore up the family. "There were letters that were sent, and we were always trying to find him, which we couldn't," Pier said.

But several times a year, such mysteries are solved at Punchbowl, and a few more "unknowns" are returned to family for burial.

The Defense Department's POW/Missing Personnel Office yesterday announced Di Salvo's identification. He will have a military funeral tomorrow in Ohio.

"We have closure now and (know) that he died instantly," Pier said yesterday by phone from Copley, Ohio. "Those are the two good things there. I know that he didn't suffer — that was important."

Pier now is 72. When she said goodbye to her deploying brother, she was 15. Her parents and two sisters died not knowing what became of Marine Corps reservist Pfc. Nick Di Salvo.

IDS CAN TAKE YEARS

The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command at Hickam Air Force Base has the mission of investigating and recovering missing U.S. service members from the nation's wars.

Identifications can take years, but the four to five exhumations annually of remains marked "unknown" at Punchbowl come with pretty good evidence of who will be found.

Kahala resident and Pearl Harbor survivor Ray Emory has made a life passion of researching unknowns at Punchbowl to give greater recognition to their sacrifice.

California resident Ron Broward, meanwhile, found the key to identifying Di Salvo, POW/ MIA Accounting Command officials said. The Korean War veteran several times a year travels to O'ahu to work with the accounting command as a volunteer on missing service member cases.

"He's been just a huge contributor to these different cases," said Air Force Staff Sgt. Elizabeth Feeney, an accounting command spokeswoman.

Di Salvo was among a group of seven U.S. remains turned over by North Korea in 1954. During "Operation Glory," North Korea repatriated 2,944 remains, 2,523 of which have been identified, Feeney said.

Six of the seven service members had been identified, and Broward looked at the units they were from to zero in on Di Salvo, comparing forensic records made in Japan after the turn-over with Di Salvo's medical history.

"Basically, the dental (record) was the key factor," said Debra Prince, the forensic anthropologist at the accounting command who works on all the Punchbowl cases from Korea.

DENTAL MATCHES

Two rare extraction types and two rare fillings were a match, and Di Salvo was exhumed last November from grave 969 at Punchbowl.

Pier said she was first contacted about the identification in April, and a Marine liaison went to Ohio in May.

"I just quivered all over and I thanked God that they identified him," Pier said.

Pier was asked if she wanted to see the pictures of skeletal remains and know the details of her brother's death. After knowing so little for so long, she wanted to know it all.

He had been hit by a barrage of gunfire. Personal possessions like wallets and medals were taken from the fallen, "and that was one of the reasons why they couldn't identify them," Pier said.

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.