World War II solider from Michigan accounted for 82 years later after Bataan Death March

(CBS DETROIT) — The remains of a World War II airman from Michigan who was captured, subjected to the Bataan Death March and died as a prisoner of war have been identified, the military said Wednesday. 

U.S. Army Air Force Sgt. James W. Swartz, 21, of Webberville, Michigan, was a member of the 17th Pursuit Squadron, 24th Pursuit Group, when Japanese forces invaded the Philippines in December 1941, according to a news release from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. Fighting continued until the surrender of the Bataan peninsula and Corregidor Island by May 1942. 

Swartz, along with thousands of U.S. and Filipino service members, were captured and held at prisoner of war camps. The DPAA said Swartz was among the soldiers captured in Bataan when U.S. forces surrendered to the Japanese. Swartz and others were then subjected to the 65-mile Bataan Death March and held at a POW camp in Cabanatuan, where more than 2,500 prisoners died during the war. 

Swartz died Sept. 23, 1942, according to prison camp records, and was buried alongside other soldiers in the Cabanatuan Camp Cemetery in Common Grave 434. 

Following the end of World War II, the American Graves Registration Service exhumed his grave and others buried at the Cabanatuan cemetery and relocated the remains to a U.S. military mausoleum near the Philippines’ capital in Manila. 

In 1947, the American Graves Registration Service attempted to identify the remains. The service identified four sets of remains from Common Grave 434, while the remaining seven were declared unidentifiable. The unidentified remains were buried at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial as Unknowns.

In April 2019, the DPAA exhumed the remains from Common Grave 434 and sent them to a lab for analysis. Using dental and anthropological analysis and mitochondrial DNA analysis, scientists with the DPAA and Armed Forces Medical Examiner System identified Swartz’s remains. 

Swartz is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial in the Philippines, where a rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate that he has been accounted for. 

He will be buried in Williamstown Township, Michigan, in April 2025.