A portrait of U.S. Army Pvt. Willard D. Merrill, 21, of Dover-Foxcroft, Maine. Merill died as a prisoner of war in World War II and was accounted for August 19, 2024. (Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency)
(Tribune News Service) — A soldier from Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, who died during World War II after the Imperial Japanese Army captured the Philippines is finally coming home.
U.S. Army Pvt. Willard D. Merrill, 21, was serving in the 2nd Observation Squadron in late 1941 when the Japanese army invaded the Philippines, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
Merrill was among the U.S. and Filipino soldiers captured after the surrender of the Bataan Peninsula on April 9, 1942.
Merrill endured the Bataan Death March, which began the next day. Seventy-eight-thousand prisoners marched 65 miles, during which they endured abuse and executions. By some estimates, around 3,000 prisoners died before reaching their final destination.
He was held at the Cabanatuan POW camp, where Merrill died on Nov. 14, 1942, and was buried in a common grave, the DPAA said Wednesday.
That common grave was exhumed after the war, and in 1947, officials began work to identify all the remains. But after that initial work, the identities of three sets of remains remained unknown and were buried in the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, where he remained until January 2019.
Those three sets of remains were exhumed again, and after using dental, anthropological and DNA analysis, as well as circumstantial evidence, scientists identified Merrill among those remains.
He will return to Maine, where he will be buried in Dover-Foxcroft in June.
An old newspaper clipping reporting on the 1942 death of U.S. Army Pvt. Willard D. Merrill and his brother, Barton Jr. (Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency)
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