Remains of Mississippi airman identified 81 years after he died as POW

A 22-year-old airman has been accounted for 81 years after he died as a prisoner of war, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said on Friday .

U.S. Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. Alvin R. Scarborough, 22, of Dossville, Mississippi was serving in the 454th Ordnance Company when Japanese forces invaded the Philippine Islands in December 1942 - sparking months of intense fighting. American and Filipino service members continued fighting until the surrender of the Bataan peninsula on April 9, 1942, and of Corregidor Island on May 6, 1942.

After the troops surrendered, thousands of U.S. and Filipino soldiers - including Scarborough - were captured and interred at prisoner-of-war camps. Scarborough was one of the troops subjected to a 65-mile Bataan death march. The Japanese assembled about 78,000 prisoners; there were 12,000 U.S. and 66,000 Filipino service members, according to Army archives , to march up the East Coast of Bataan. Only 54,000 prisoners reached the camp, though the exact numbers are unknown.

He was then held at the Cabanatuan POW camp, where the DPAA said more than 2,500 prisoners of war died. Conditions at the Cabanatuan POW camp were mildly better than Camp O'Donnell - where the majority of POWS perished - and prisoner doctors were able to stem disease and death rates.

Scarborough died July 28, 1942, and was buried along with other deceased prisoners in the local Cabanatuan Camp Cemetery in Common Grave 215, according to prison camp and other historical records. After the war, graves at the Cabanatuan cemetery were exhumed and the remains were relocated to a temporary U.S. military mausoleum near Manila, according to the American Graves Registration Service

Remains from Common Grave 215 were sent to DPAA labs in 2018 for analysis. Many remains weren't able to be identified, but researchers used anthropological analysis, circumstantial evidence and mitochondrial DNA - and Scarborough was accounted for on Sept. 21, 2023.

Scarborough will be buried in Carthage, Mississippi, on a date to be determined, the DPAA said.