After 82 years, remains confirmed as being Minneapolis WWII POW subjected to 65-mile Death March

Officials on Thursday confirmed the identity of the remains of a Minneapolis soldier captured in the Philippines during World War II and subjected with many others to what history has memorialized as the 65-mile Bataan Death March.

The Defense Department’s POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced Thursday that the remains of Army Air Forces Pvt. Robert W. Cash, 20, were accounted for on April 3.

Cash was a member of the 28th Materiel Squadron, 20th Air Base Group when Japanese forces invaded the Philippine Islands in December 1941, according to the announcement. The intense fighting ended with the United States’ surrender of the Bataan Peninsula on April 9, 1942, and of Corregidor Island on May 6, 1942.

At the time of his death, Cash’s parents lived in the 4900 block of S. Elliot Avenue, according to a Minneapolis Tribune account from 1942 announcing a memorial service for him at Hennepin Avenue Methodist Church just off Loring Park.

The Tribune report said Cash graduated from Minneapolis Washburn High School and attended the University of Minnesota.

Cash’s family recently received a full briefing on his identification, the announcement added. He will be buried in Pittsford, N.Y., on a date to be determined.

According to the DPAA:

Thousands of U.S. and Filipino service members were captured and interned at POW camps, with Cash among them. He and others were subjected to the 65-mile Bataan Death March and then held at a camp at Cabanatuan, where more than 2,500 POWs perished during the war.

At its peak, Cabanatuan held about 8,000 American and Filipino prisoners. Conditions there were poor, with little food and water. That led to widespread malnutrition and outbreaks of malaria and dysentery.

According to prison camp and other historical records, Cash died July 16, 1942, and was buried along with other prisoners in the local Cabanatuan Camp Cemetery in Common Grave 316.

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

In 1947, the AGRS began efforts to identify the remains. Eleven sets from Common Grave 316 were identified, with 17 others declared unidentifiable. The unidentified remains were buried at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial as “Unknowns.”

In April 2019, as part of the Cabanatuan Project, the DPAA exhumed the remains and sent them to its laboratory for analysis.

Scientists at the lab used dental and anthropological analysis, as well as unspecified circumstantial evidence, to identify Cash’s remains. Other Defense Department scientists contributed DNA analysis to confirm the remains as Cash’s.

Although interred as an unknown in Manila, Thursday’s announcement read, “Cash’s grave was meticulously cared for over the past 70 years by the American Battle Monuments Commission.

Cash is memorialized among others on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.