Remains of two US soldiers killed in PH in WWII identified

Army Pfc. Arthur C. Barrett and U.S. Army Pfc. Lex L. Lillard.

The remains of two American soldiers who were killed in the Philippines in World War II were identified and are being repatriated for interment in the United States.

Army Pfc. Arthur C. Barrett of the 31st Infantry Regiment, a native of Swanton, Vermont killed during World War II, will be interred Aug. 30 at Arlington National Cemetery, in Virginia.

Also identified was U.S. Army Pfc. Lex L. Lillard of Tucson, Arizona, who was a member of the Medical Department of Manila and Subic Bays in the Philippines.

Both soldiers became prisoners of war after the surrender of the Bataan peninsula on April 9, 1942, and of Corregidor Island on May 6, 1942.

Read also: The first US soldier to die in PH on Dec. 8, 1941 was Black    

Thousands of U.S. and Filipino service members 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.

According to prison camp and other historical records, Barrett and Lillard were buried in a common grave along with other deceased prisoners in the local Cabanatuan Camp Cemetery.

Following the war, American Graves Registration Service (AGRS) personnel exhumed those buried at the Cabanatuan cemetery and relocated the remains to a temporary U.S. military mausoleum near Manila.

Anthropological analysis, circumstantial evidence and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis by scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System were used to identify the remains