Remains of Merrill’s Marauder killed and missing from World War II identified

The remains of a 27-year-old officer who fought in Burma during World War II as a member of the famed Merrill’s Marauders outfit have been identified and returned to family members in Minnesota after 80 years.

U.S. Army 1st Lt. Herman J. Sundstad was killed in action on June 5, 1944, during the Battle of Myitkyina, but his body was not immediately recoverable in the heat of battle, according to a news release Friday by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, which is tasked with recovering and identifying the nation’s war dead.

The agency positively identified Sundstad on June 24, but it did not release information until the family was fully briefed on the identification process.

Sundstad left behind a wife living in Santa Barbara, Calif., according to a photocopy of a July 27, 1944, newspaper clipping provided with the news release.

In one of a pair of World War II-era photos of Sundstad accompanying the news release, the young officer is shown with his wife and a young boy. Sundstad was originally from Perley, Minn., which lies near the state’s border with North Dakota.

Russell Hamler, who died in December at age 99, was the last living Marauder.

Merrill’s Marauders — officially the 5307th Composite Unit Provisional and commanded by Brig. Gen. Frank Merrill — were tasked with capturing the Japanese-held airfield at Myitkyina in northern Burma, which they did on May 17, 1944.

To reach the airfield, the unit made a 1,000-mile trek over the Himalayan foothills, through jungles and enemy resistance. Disease, exhaustion, malnutrition and the enemy winnowed them down from roughly 3,000 men to barely 200 by the time they seized the airfield.

Sundstad was killed in the subsequent battle to capture the town of Myitkyina.

“Historical records of Sundstad’s assigned unit were lost, but he was believed to be a member of 3rd Battalion,” the DPAA news release states.

“At the time of his loss, 3rd Battalion was engaging an overwhelming enemy force near the village of Namkwi. The exact circumstances of his death were not recorded, and his remains were not accounted for during or after the war.”

In the fall of 1944, personnel with the American Graves Registration Service recovered a set of unknown remains, which were designated X-75, in the vicinity of Myitkyina, the news release states.

Investigators were unable to identify X-75, and eventually those remains and others from that area were buried in graves of the unknown at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

In 2021, DPAA disinterred X-75 and undertook scientific analysis at the forensic lab at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. Sundstad was identified through dental and anthropological analysis, circumstantial evidence and DNA testing, the news release states.