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Remains of World War II veteran to be buried in St. Louis next month

Army Private James R. Tash was a St. Louis native and member of F Company, 2nd Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment.
Credit: KSDK
Tash was captured and died as a prisoner of war during World War II. He has now been accounted for as of Sept. 27, 2022.

ST. LOUIS — A World War II soldier from the St. Louis area will finally return more than 80 years after he was killed while serving in Japan.

The remains of Army Private James R. Tash will be interred at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery on April 7. Tash was a St. Louis native and member of F Company, 2nd Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment.

According to a press release from the U. S. Army Human Resources Command, Tash was among thousands of U.S. and Filipino service members captured and taken as a prisoner of war. The prisoners were subjected to the Bataan Death March, a 65-mile march through tropical conditions without adequate medical care. 

After the march, Tash and others were held in the Cabanatuan POW camp. Tash died on July 19, 1942, at the age of 20. 

He was buried in a common grave, where his body remained until the end of the war. Following the war, the American Graves Registration Service exhumed the remains at the Cabanatuan cemetery are brought them to a temporary U.S. military mausoleum near Manila.

When the American Graves Registration Service examined the remains, only 12 of the bodies could be identified, and the others were buried at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial as unknowns.

In early 2018, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency moved the unidentified bodies to Joint Base Pearl Harbor to start taking another look at the unidentified remains. In September, his remains were identified using dental, anthropological, mitochondrial DNA and autosomal DNA analysis in addition to circumstantial evidence.

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