LEAKE COUNTY, Miss. ( WJTV ) – On Friday, August 9, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced that U.S. Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. Alvin R. Scarborough, 22, of Dossville, Mississippi, was accounted for on September 21, 2023.

Scarborough was was captured and died as a prisoner of war during World War II. In 1942, he was a member of 454th Ordnance Company (Aviation), when Japanese forces invaded the Philippine Islands in December. Intense fighting continued until the surrender of the Bataan peninsula on April 9, 1942, and of Corregidor Island on May 6, 1942.

Thousands of U.S. and Filipino service members were captured and interned at POW camps.  According to officials, Scarborough was among those reported captured when U.S. forces in Bataan surrendered to the Japanese. They were subjected to the 65-mile Bataan Death March and then held at the Cabanatuan POW camp. More than 2,500 POWs died in this camp during the war.

According to prison camp and other historical records, Scarborough died July 28, 1942, and was buried along with other deceased prisoners in the local Cabanatuan Camp Cemetery in Common Grave 215.

Following the war, American Graves Registration Service (AGRS) personnel exhumed those buried at the Cabanatuan cemetery and relocated the remains to a temporary U.S. military mausoleum near Manila. In 1947, the AGRS examined the remains in an attempt to identify them. Five sets of remains from Common Grave 215 were identified, but the rest were declared unidentifiable. The unidentified remains were buried at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial (MACM) as Unknowns.

In early 2018, the remains associated with Common Grave 215 were disinterred and sent to the DPAA laboratory for analysis.

To identify Scarborough’s remains, scientists from DPAA used anthropological analysis, as well as circumstantial evidence. Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis.

Scarborough will be buried in Carthage, Mississippi, at a later date.

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