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  • 2020-09-12 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Medal of Honor Recipient Joe Jackson Die Without Proper Tribute? (en)
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  • In 2019 and 2020, readers asked Snopes to examine a widely shared Facebook post about retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Joe Jackson, a Medal of Honor recipient who died at the age of 95 in January 2019. In particular, the meme made a pointed claim that Jackson's passing went unmentioned. The most widely shared version of the meme was posted in May 2019, and contained a photograph of Jackson, along with the following text: This is Colonel Joe Jackson. After surviving WWII & Korea he landed a C-123 behind enemy lines under intense fire to rescue a three man Air Combat Control Team. He died yesterday & there was NO mention of him. PLEASE SHARE. The earliest iteration of that set of claims around Jackson appears to have come in a Jan. 17, 2019, Instagram post by Vincent Suppa: Joe Madison Jackson was born on March 14, 1923, in Newnan, Georgia, and died on Jan. 12, 2019, in Washington state. A Congressional Medal of Honor Society news release gave the following account of his distinguished military career: A lengthy and detailed interview with Jackson himself, in which he recounts his early life and military career, can be viewed here. Jackson's official Medal of Honor citation provides the following account of his role in the Kham Duc evacuation: An even more detailed account of his actions on that day can be found on the website of the Air Mobility Command Museum. The description of Jackson's exploits included in the meme was therefore accurate. However, the claim that his death went unnoticed was false. By Jan. 17, 2019, when Suppa published his Instagram post, obituaries and tributes to Jackson had already been published by the following prominent sources: the U.S. Air Force; the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs; the Congressional Medal of Honor Society; the military newspaper Stars and Stripes; Military.com; (an obituary later republished by the Military Officers Association of America); the Newnan Times-Herald (Jackson's hometown newspaper); and the Air Force Times, whose obituary described Jackson as an Air Force legend. The claim was even less true when later versions of the meme were published in March 2019, and on May 3, 2019, by which time the description of Jackson's death as having taken place yesterday was nearly four months out of date. By then, The Washington Post had published its own obituary for Jackson, which was subsequently republished by several local newspapers around the United States. A degree of irony exists in the fact that those who, in the spring of 2019, expressed indignation at a supposed collective failure to honor the life and achievements of Jackson, were themselves several months late in marking his passing. (en)
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