Remains of World War II prisoners of war who died in the Philippines returned to California

ONTARIO, Calif. (AP) — The long-unidentified remains of a World War II soldier who died in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in the Philippines in 1942 were returned to California on Tuesday.

The remains of 18-year-old U.S. Army Air Forces Private 1st Class Charles R. Powers of Riverside were flown to Ontario International Airport east of Los Angeles on Thursday, exactly 82 years after his death, and buried at Riverside National Cemetery.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced in June that Powers was identified on May 26, 2023, following an analysis of his remains, including DNA.

Powers was a member of the 28th Materiel Squadron, 20th Air Base Group, when Japanese forces invaded the Philippines in late 1941, leading to the surrender of U.S. and Filipino forces on the Bataan Peninsula in April 1942 and on Corregidor Island the following month.

Powers was reportedly captured at the surrender of Bataan and was among those who participated in the 105-kilometer Bataan Death March and was subsequently held at the Cabanatuan prison camp, where more than 2,500 prisoners of war died, the agency said.

Powers died on July 18, 1942, and was buried with others in a communal grave. After the war, three unidentified remains from the grave were reburied at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial. They were exhumed in 2018 for laboratory analysis.