Local Salinas corporal and WWII POW identified
SALINAS, Calif. (KION-TV) -- The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced Friday that a Salinas corporal who was captured and died as a prisoner of war (POW) during World War II, had finally been accounted for.
The Accounting Agency said that on April 29 of this year, Corporal Raymond N. DeCloss (24 years old at the time of his death) was identified as being from Salinas.
DeCloss was a member of Company C, 194th Tank Battalion, U.S. Army in December 1941, when Japanese forces invaded the Philippine Islands, according to the Department of Defense. After intense fighting, the Bataan peninsula and Corregidor Island surrendered (April 9 and May 6, 1942, respectively), reported the Accounting Agency.
During this time, the Department of Defense says that thousands of U.S. and Filipino service members were captures as prisoners of war and detained in war camps. They say that DeCloss was among those captured when the U.S. surrendered to the Japanese in Bataan.
The prisoners were ordered to a 65-mile Bataan Death March and then held at the Cabanatuan POW Camp #1, according to the Department of Defense. The Department of Defense reported that over 2,500 POWs were killed in this camp during the war.
"According to prison camp and other historical records, DeCloss died Nov. 15, 1942, and was buried along with other deceased prisoners in the local Cabanatuan Camp Cemetery in Common Grave 721," wrote the Accounting Agency in a statement Friday. "Today, DeCloss is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial in the Philippines. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for."
After the war, American Graves Registration Service (AGRS) workers excavated the soldiers buried at the Cabanatuan cemetery, with the remains held temporarily at a U.S. military mausoleum near Manila, according to the Department of Defense. Then in 1947, they say that the AGRS was able to identify five sets of remains, DeCloss being one of them.
"Five of the sets of remains from Common Grave 721 were identified, while the remaining 10 were declared unidentifiable," wrote the Accounting Agency in a statement. "The unidentified remains were buried at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial (MACM) as Unknowns."
Next, according to the Department of Defense, the DPAA sent the remains from Common Grave 721 to laboratory for analysis in 2018. There, DeCloss was identified through dental and anthropological analysis, in addition to circumstantial evidence, said the Department of Defense.
The scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System also used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), Y chromosome DNA (Y-STR) and autosomal DNA (auSTR) analysis to help identify DeCloss, according to the Accounting Agency. "Although interred as an Unknown in MACM, DeCloss’s grave was meticulously cared for over the past 70 years by the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC)," they wrote in a statement.
According to the Department of Defense, DeCloss will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery, on a date to be determined.
