Remains of World War II POW who died in the Philippines returned home to California

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

The long-unidentified remains of a World War II service member who died in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in the Philippines in 1942 were returned home to California on Tuesday.

The remains of U.S. Army Air Forces Pvt. 1st Class Charles R. Powers, 18, of Riverside, were flown to Ontario International Airport east of Los Angeles for burial at Riverside National Cemetery on Thursday, 82 years to the day of his death.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced in June that Powers was accounted for on May 26, 2023, after analysis of his remains, including use of DNA.

Powers was a member of 28th Materiel Squadron, 20th Air Base Group, when Japanese forces invaded the Philippines in late 1941, leading to surrender of U.S. and Filipino forces on the Bataan peninsula in April 1942 and Corregidor Island the following month.

Powers was reported captured in the Bataan surrender and was among those subjected to the 65-mile (105-kilometer) Bataan Death March and then held at the Cabanatuan prison camp where more than 2,500 POWs died, the agency said.

Powers died on July 18, 1942, and was buried with others in a common grave. After the war, three sets of unidentifiable remains from the grave were reburied at Manila American Cemetery and Memorial. They were disinterred in 2018 for laboratory analysis.