Who is Cecil T. Hinson? After 80 years, the WWII soldier will come home to Rock Hill

On a warm Wednesday afternoon, York native Ronnie Taylor sits beneath magnolia shade facing 249 names etched in stone. There’s another name, both new and old, penned to a small slip of paper in his pocket.

It belongs to Cecil T. Hinson.

“It was my prayer that I don’t see another name put on there during my lifetime,” Taylor said, looking across at the wall of fallen soldier inscriptions at York County Veterans Memorial Park. “But I will, and this one’s not a bad thing.”

Just last week, the federal Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced Hinson was accounted for using dental, DNA and other analysis. It came more than 80 years after Hinson left Rock Hill to fight in World War II.

Who was Cecil Hinson?

Herald archives mention the name “Cecil Hinson” several times during the years he would’ve been here, from high school football game reports to military draft announcements. It’s unclear how many, if any, of those references involve the newly accounted for soldier.

A Cecil Hinson appears on a full page of names printed in October 1940, of draft serial numbers issued for eastern York County residents. That name, though, is Cecil Eola Hinson who would later go to Fort Jackson for induction into the Army, according to archives.

On May 31, 1943, the Rock Hill Printing and Finishing Co. took out a full page Memorial Day honor roll listing about 750 service members from the company. A Cecil Hinson is included. In September 1943, the company placed an ad listing a Cecil Hinson among more than 550 armed service members — including five Hinsons — asking for addresses or other information to send a service book published in their honor.

The federal accounting agency offers more detail about Hinson’s military experience. He was a U.S. Army private in the Chemical Warfare Service when Japanese forces invaded the Philippine Islands in 1942. Hinson was captured when U.S. soldiers on the Bataan peninsula surrendered. He endured the 65-mile Bataan Death March to become a prisoner of war at the Cabanatuan camp where more than 2,500 prisoners died during the war.

Prison camp and other records determined Hinson died July 28, 1942 and was buried in a common grave with other prisoners at the Cabanatuan Camp Cemetery. Hinson was 20 years old.

Bodies from the cemetery were exhumed after the war and sent to a temporary military mausoleum near Manila. Five of the 12 remains from the common grave were identified in a 1947 examination. The rest, including Hinson’s, were declared unidentifiable. They were buried at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial as unknown soldiers.

Six years ago, those remains were disinterred for further analysis. That testing led to Hinson’s identification. His remains will be buried in Rock Hill at a yet undetermined date.

Memorial Day list of veterans from York County

Between the historic Trinity UMC church and an old train depot in downtown York, just beside the public library, the county’s Veteran Memorial Park is a meticulously kept strip of history. Taylor, 70, and others volunteered their time in 2016. The park opened in 2018. It has memorials for veterans, those wounded in action and Gold Star Families.

The central piece is a monument, something between a wall and a headstone, featuring the names of 249 service members who died in action. Taylor is particular about those names. Some memorials elsewhere only list veterans who died in the field of battle. Taylor doesn’t see much difference between someone killed in battle and someone who might have died days or weeks later from wounds suffered in battle.

“If you left York County and died in theater, for whatever reason... your name goes on that wall,” Taylor said.

Every Memorial Day, as many as 400 people come out to hear each of those names read aloud. Sunday marks the 38th annual Memorial Day Ceremony in York. Taylor’s group has a longstanding agreement with folks in Fort Mill, where their Veterans Park at the bottom of Main Street or Unity Cemetery hosts its own Memorial Day event each year. York gets Sunday, and Fort Mill gets Monday.

That agreement serves lots of folks, Taylor said, who want to pay their respects at both events.

History of York County fallen soldiers

Every name on the York monument has a story.

There’s Tom Hall, the World War I Army sergeant who before lending his name to one of the busier roads in Fort Mill was honored posthumously with the Medal of Honor. Hall’s platoon overtook two machine gun nests before he ordered his men to take cover as he advanced, alone, on another where he killed five combatants with his bayonet, according to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. He was mortally wounded near Montbrehain, France in 1918.

There’s Charles Lewis Morgan. Taylor still recalls the 1968 funeral for the Rock Hill Marine killed in Vietnam. Morgan, a Lance Cpl., died on May 31 of that year. He was 18. Every so often, the casualty date falls on a Memorial Day.

The most recent name almost didn’t make the monument unveiling. Javion Sullivan died in Anbar Province, Iraq in early 2018. The Fort Mill High School graduate and Army specialist was the first U.S. casualty that year. He was 24.

The York monument lists 150 veterans killed in World War II. There are 50 from World War I, 36 from Vietnam, eight from the Korean War and five from Operation Enduring Freedom. Their stories vary, except for how they were cut short.

Taylor spent 14 years in the Army Reserves before working as a nuclear fuel handler at Catawba Nuclear Station and others in the region. He’s been retired two decades, and has seen the family and community milestones that come and go with age. He recognizes the people named on the monument, regardless how much or little is known of them now, didn’t get those opportunities.

“That’s somebody’s dad, somebody’s brother, somebody’s son,” Taylor said. “We will read their names every year, regardless.”

Including, finally, the name Cecil T. Hinson.

“We’re going to try to put his name up there, too,” Taylor said.

Want to go?

Memorial Day events in the Rock Hill region include:

▪ Memorial Day Ceremony, Veterans Memorial Park, York at 3:45 p.m. Sunday

▪ Veterans Memorial Dedication, New Centre Park, Clover at 9 a.m. Monday

▪ Memorial Day Ceremony, Living Memorial Gardens, Tega Cay at 9 a.m. Monday

▪ Memorial Day Ceremony, Unity Cemetery, Fort Mill at 10 a.m. Monday