A missing St. Louis man who was captured during World War II and died as a prisoner of war has finally been accounted for.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced Monday that U.S. Army Private James R. Tash of St. Louis was at a prison camp in the Philippines when he died on July 19, 1942.
"Thousands of U.S. and Filipino service members were captured and interned at POW camps. Tash was among those reported captured when U.S. forces in Bataan surrendered to the Japanese," a press release reads. "They were subjected to the 65-mile Bataan Death March and then held at the Cabanatuan POW camp. More than 2,500 POWs perished in this camp during the war."
Tash was buried with other prisoners in the camp's cemetery in Common Grave 312. When the war ended, American Graves Registration Service exhumed people buried at the cemetery and sent the remains to a mausoleum. Twelve sets of remains from the cemetery were able to be identified — the rest were declared "unidentifiable."
In 2018, the remains from Grave 312 were sent to the DPAA's lab in Hawaii to be further analyzed. There, they were tested with dental, anthropological and DNA analysis, and Tash was eventually identified.
Tash will be buried in St. Louis. View his personnel profile here.
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