War: Taps

On a big grey Navy transport in Yokohama, a bugler sounded taps. On the pier, another bugler echoed him. Fifty pressed steel caskets containing the bodies of U.S. fighting men killed in Korea* were loaded on to the ship, which slid out to sea under grey skies.

It was the first time in history that the U.S. had started returning its war dead to home soil while a war was still going on. Eventually the Army expects to send home all of the nation’s Korean war dead.

*Including Major General Bryant E. Moore, onetime IX Corps commander, who died after a front-line helicopter crash (TIME, March 5).