MOUNT OLIVE, Ill — Sgt. John W. Radanovich was a soldier who died in World War II. On August 12, his body will be buried at Union Miner Cemetery in Mount Olive, Illinois. Becker & Sons Funeral Home in Mount Olive will hold services at the grave before the burial. 

His remains were found by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency on May 11, 2023. They were recognized using DNA analysis.

Radanovich’s name is written on the Walls of the lost, along with the names of other people who are still lost from World War II at the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, Netherlands. His name will be marked with a pin to show that he has been found.   

Radanovich was from Mount Olive, Illinois and was part of the 4th Infantry Division’s Company G, 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment. When he was 23 years old, his rifle platoon was fighting German forces near the town of Grosshau in Hürtgen Forest, Germany.  

On December 1, 1944, he was reported lost in action. He was never listed as a prisoner of war by the Germans, and his body was never found. In December 1945, the War Department said that it was likely that he was dead. 

Between 1946 and 1950, after the war was over, the American Graves Registration Command did several searches in the Hürtgen area. However, none of the remains found were those of Radanovich.

A historian with the DPAA was looking into unsolved American deaths in the Hürtgen Forest. He found that a set of unnamed remains found near Grosshau in 1946 and given the number X-2754A Neuville might have belonged to Radanovich.  

The remains were buried in Ardennes American Cemetery, a site run by the American Battle Monuments Commission in Neupré, Belgium. In June 2021, they were dug up and sent to the DPAA lab for study.