By INS Contributors

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia: For over 80 years, the family of U.S. Army Tech5 Edwin E. Ross lived in a state of agonizing limbo—the kind that comes when a soldier goes to war and never returns, leaving only a name on a wall and a wound that time cannot heal.

That wait ended on July 18, 2025. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced this week that Ross, who died at 24 as a prisoner of war (POW) in the Philippines, has been accounted for. His remains, once buried among “Unknowns” in a distant memorial, will be laid to rest in his hometown of Philadelphia, Mississippi, on April 17, 2026.

“Our mission is to provide the fullest possible accounting for our missing personnel to their families and the nation. It’s something that we call a sacred mission and a sacred promise to our service members and their families,” DPAA Chief of Staff Col. Derek Rankin previously told the media.

For Ross, the road home has been a century in the making.

‘The Most Notorious’ POW Camp

In the fall of 1941, Ross was assigned to the 17th Bombardment Squadron, 27th Bombardment Group, stationed in the Philippine Islands. When Japanese forces invaded in December, Ross and his comrades endured months of grueling combat. Following the surrender of the Bataan peninsula on April 9, 1942, and Corregidor Island on May 6, Ross was among tens of thousands of American and Filipino troops forced to surrender. 

He was subsequently held at the Cabanatuan POW camp, a facility that haunts the history of the Pacific war. At its peak, the camp held approximately 8,000 prisoners. According to historical records, more than 2,500 POWs perished there from disease, starvation, and abuse. 

Records show Ross died on July 27, 1942. He was buried in Common Grave 225 at the Cabanatuan Camp Cemetery.

The Science of Recovery

Following the war, the American Graves Registration Service exhumed the Cabanatuan cemetery, recovering 18 sets of remains from Ross’s common grave. However, due to the limitations of forensic science at the time, 15 of those individuals, including Ross, could not be identified. They were reinterred as “Unknowns” at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial (MACM) in the Philippines.

For seven decades, the American Battle Monuments Commission cared for his grave—a silent vigil for a soldier whose name was known only to God.

That changed in March 2018. As part of the DPAA’s Cabanatuan Project, the remains associated with Common Grave 225 were disinterred from MACM and sent to the DPAA laboratory. There, scientists used a combination of historical detective work and cutting-edge technology to finally give Ross his name back.

“It’s not just bones in the ground,” said Tristan Krause, a historian and Ph.D. candidate at Texas A&M who has worked on DPAA recovery missions. “These are people who loved their spouses, had dreams of what they would do once they returned from war. You find a tooth, and you know that tooth is one of the best sources of DNA for getting a match. You know that you’re that much closer to bringing somebody home.” 

To identify Ross, DPAA scientists utilized anthropological analysis and circumstantial evidence. Meanwhile, specialists at the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System (AFMES) employed advanced techniques including mitochondrial DNA analysis, mitochondrial genome sequencing, and nuclear single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) testing—the same type of cutting-edge genetic science used by consumer ancestry services, but adapted for highly degraded samples. 

A Mission of ‘Extraordinary Efforts’

Ross is one of 231 missing service members identified by the DPAA in fiscal year 2025—a record for the agency.  Yet the scale of the work remains staggering. According to the DPAA, more than 81,000 American service members remain missing from World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and other conflicts. Of those, approximately 41,000 are presumed lost at sea, unrecoverable. 

“If you make the ultimate sacrifice, and you go and sacrifice yourself for your country abroad, America owes you something,” Krause said. “It is the nation’s obligation to go and bring you home.” 

That obligation is expensive, logistically complex, and often dangerous. DPAA teams deploy to 46 countries, from the jungles of Papua New Guinea to the battlefields of Europe.  The work requires navigating not only difficult terrain and acidic soil that degrades DNA, but also complex diplomatic relationships.

“This mission can be an avenue to have friendlier relations and normalize everything,” said Sean Everette, DPAA media relations chief. The agency’s humanitarian work in Vietnam, for example, predated the normalization of diplomatic relations and continues to serve as a cornerstone of the bilateral partnership. 

‘You’re Never Going to Be the Same’

For the families who have waited decades, even generations, the moment of identification is seismic.

Mark Gibson, whose grandfather, Master Sgt. Thomas Crayton, was identified by the DPAA in 2023 after being lost in Korea, described the impact in an interview: “I never really realized that not knowing him at all, but also just never having his remains, it’s almost in some weird way I didn’t have a grandfather,” Gibson said. “But when all of a sudden you have that understanding, you can locate that person in the world, then they become real to you in a different way.” 

As the DPAA prepares to bury Tech5 Ross next spring, a rosette will be placed next to his name on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery—a small marker that signifies a profound truth: he is no longer missing.

“There’s strength in togetherness,” Col. Rankin said. “Knowing that they’re not alone, that they are part of a broader family of folks that are in this together.” 

Ross’s family recently received a full briefing on his identification. For funeral details, contact the Army Casualty Office at (800) 892-2490. The DPAA expressed gratitude to the American Battle Monuments Commission and the U.S. Army for their partnership.

About the DPAA: The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency is a congressionally mandated organization formed in 2015, consolidating previous military accounting efforts. Headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, with forensic laboratories in Nebraska and Hawaii, the agency employs more forensic anthropologists than any other organization in the world. Its mandate is to achieve the “fullest possible accounting” of missing U.S. personnel.