








































Forensic Anthropology Vol. 2, No. 2: 113–120
DOI: 10.5744/fa.2019.1014

© 2019 University of Florida Press

Historical Background

Cabanatuan Prison Camp was one of several Japanese- run 
prisoner- of- war (POW) camps located on Luzon Island in the 
Philippines (Fig. 1). After the Filipino and American surren-
der on the Bataan Peninsula on 8 April 1942, there were an 
estimated 65,000 Filipino and 10,000 Americans that were 
transported to various prison camps (Morton 1953). Many of 
the POWs were forced to walk approximately 100 kilometers 
across the Bataan Peninsula (the Bataan “Death March”) to 
a temporary prison camp, Camp O’Donnell. The POWs 
who endured the forced march across the Bataan Peninsula 
were in very poor physical condition. At the start of the march 

they had already spent over four months fighting advancing 
Japanese forces with dwindling supplies of food, medicine, 
and ammunition. Many were suffering from malaria, dengue, 
dysentery, and hookworm (Harris & Beckenbaugh 2014). 
During the march itself, both American and Filipino prison-
ers suffered physical abuse by Japanese guards in events that 
were later judged by an Allied military commission to be a 
Japanese war crime (Murphy 2014). At Camp O’Donnell, 
American and Filipino prisoners were housed in separate 
sections of the camp. Starting in June 1942, the Japanese 
relocated the senior American officers to Tarlac (a nearby 
province) and moved the remaining American POWs to 
Cabanatuan (Kerr 1985; Knox 1981). The Filipino POWs 
stayed at Camp O’Donnell until their release. More Ameri-
can POWs were sent to Cabanatuan after the surrender of 
Corregidor Island on 6 May 1942. In general, the Americans 
from Corregidor were in better overall physical condition 
than those from Bataan. They had been allowed to keep their 
personal effects and were even able to purchase supplies at 
Bilibid Prison on the way to Cabanatuan (Knox 1981).

Cabanatuan Prison Camp was occupied from June 1942 
until the end of World War II in September 1945. The popu-
lation of the camp was at its highest (approximately 7,000 to 
10,000 men) after the influx of Americans from Corregidor 
in June 1942. The camp population fluctuated due to rotating 
work details where men were taken out of camp for periods 

aDefense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Central Identification 
Laboratory, Joint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam, Hawai’i, USA

*Correspondence to: Mary Megyesi, Defense POW/MIA Accounting 
Agency, Central Identification Laboratory, 590 Moffett St., Bldg. 4077, 
Joint Base Pearl Harbor– Hickam, Hawai’i 96853, USA 

e- mail: mary  .s  .megyesi  .civ@mail  .mil

The opinions expressed in this presentation are entirely those of the 
author and do not represent an official position of the Department of 
Defense.

Portions of this paper were presented at the 70th Annual Scientific 
Meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, Seattle, WA, 
February 19– 24, 2018

Received 11 June 2018; Revised 29 August 2018;  
Accepted 30 August 2018

CASE REPORT

Challenges to Identifications of the Cabanatuan Prison 
Camp Cemetery Remains

Mary Megyesia*

ABSTRACT: As part of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency’s (DPAA) mission to provide the fullest possible accounting for 
U.S. military personnel lost in past conflicts, disinterments of unknown remains from permanent U.S. military cemeteries have increased 
(Megyesi et al. 2016). Individuals who died as prisoners of war (POWs) at Cabanatuan Prison Camp and were buried as unknowns in the 
Manila American Cemetery and Memorial are currently being disinterred and identified at the DPAA Laboratory in Hawai’i. Cabanatuan 
Prison Camp was one of several Japanese- run POW camps located on Luzon Island in the Philippines. The Cabanatuan remains are highly 
commingled due to a variety of circumstances related to their initial burial, recovery, and past analyses. Commingling in the Cabanatuan 
assemblage includes individuals that were identified and resolved soon after World War II and individuals that were unresolved, or “unknown.” 
These circumstances create anthropological and historical complexity for these cases. For instance, given a set of remains from a resolved 
individual, how do we navigate an identification for those remains, and the set of (now unknown) remains that were buried after an erro-
neous identification several decades ago? Identifying the commingled remains of Cabanatuan entails revisiting identifications made under 
completely different operational and scientific standards of the late 1940s. The goals of this article are to introduce the specific challenges 
of examination and identification of the Cabanatuan remains to the forensic anthropology community and to provide an example of a sin-
gle identification made from this assemblage.

KEYWORDS: forensic anthropology, commingling, World War II, prisoner of war, Philippines



114 Identifying Cabanatuan Remains

FIG. 1—Map of Republic of Philippines with location of Cabanatuan designated by the star.



Megyesi 115

of time, in addition to continuous transfers of prisoners to 
and from other locations. The best estimates indicate there 
were approximately 5,000 to 6,000 American POWs at Caba-
natuan during 1942 and 1943 (Harris & Beckenbaugh 2014). 
Conditions at the camp were poor: there was often inadequate 
food, water, shelter, and medical care. Coupled with the 
severe physical hardships the POWs had already endured, the 
death rate at Cabanatuan soared. In total, there were 2,763 
confirmed casualties of American POWs at Cabanatuan, with 
over half of these deaths occurring in the first 6 months of 
occupation (Harris & Beckenbaugh 2014).

While Cabanatuan was occupied, American POWs who 
died were buried in a prison camp cemetery by burial details 
made up of other American POWs (Knox 1981). Burials at 
Cabanatuan were conducted on a daily system, such that all 
individuals who died within a 24- hour period were interred 
together in a mass grave. These mass graves were subse-
quently numbered by the American Graves Registration 
Service (AGRS) after the camp was liberated (Fig. 2). Each 
mass grave is referred to as a common grave (CG) along with 
the number it was assigned by the AGRS (e.g., CG 215). 
Records of the CG burials, to include casualty names, dates, 

FIG. 2—Map of common grave designations at Cabanatuan Prison Camp Cemetery created by the 111th Quartermaster Graves Registration Platoon in 
August 1945.



116 Identifying Cabanatuan Remains

and location of the burials, are incomplete and inconsistent. 
A roster of names of those buried within any given 24- hour 
period was compiled by American officers, who, like every-
one else, were suffering from inadequate food, shelter, and 
medical care. The difficulty of keeping accurate records was 
compounded by the high death rate. For instance, in Novem-
ber 1942 alone there were 298 deaths documented. The 
records compiled by the officers at the time serve as the foun-
dation for all subsequent identification efforts of the Caba-
natuan remains; however, as a result of these circumstances, 
associations between an individual and a particular CG are 
often tenuous.

Past Analyses of Cabanatuan Remains

1945– 1947

Soon after World War II ended in 1945, the AGRS exhumed 
the Cabanatuan Prison Camp Cemetery. The remains were 
inventoried, preliminary analysis was performed, and many 
(1,000+) individuals were identified, primarily on the basis of 
associated identification media (metal ID tags) or dental com-
parison. These identifications were made under less rigorous 
scientific and methodological standards than the ones we cur-
rently employ as forensic anthropologists in the 21st century.

Associated identification tags could be easily mixed up 
during the initial field recovery of the CGs. In addition, at 
the time of death an individual could have been in possession 
of another person’s identification tag for a variety of reasons. 
It is unclear exactly how each association was determined 
and what measures (if any) were taken to mitigate issues that 
could cause misidentification. As a result, identifications 
based on ID tags are highly suspect and likely represent the 
majority of the misidentifications made during the historical 
analysis period.

Dental identifications made at this time involved a two- 
step process, in which the dental officer making the identifi-
cation did not directly examine the dental remains. Dental 
charts recording teeth present were created by members of 
the 111th Quartermaster Graves Registration Platoon as the 
remains were disinterred. Copies of these dental charts were 
sent to two Dental Corps officers placed on temporary duty 
in the Memorial Division of the Office of the Quartermaster 
General in Washington, DC. The two Dental Corps officers 
then compared the dental records of the men who were 
reported buried at Cabanatuan with the dental charts created 
by the 111th Quartermaster Graves Registration Platoon. By 
early 1947 approximately 284 dental identifications were 
made via this process (Harris & Beckenbaugh 2014).

As a result of these practices, many of these individuals 
were misidentified. The unidentified individuals were 
interred temporarily at the U.S. Army Air Forces Cemetery 
in Manila. During this initial period of processing, analysis, 

and identification, commingling of skeletal elements among 
individuals within the same CG and between CGs likely 
occurred, in addition to erroneous identifications.

1947– 1950

Starting around 1947, the Cabanatuan remains at the U.S. 
Army Air Forces Cemetery were disinterred and moved to 
the AGRS Mausoleum at Nichols Field near Manila. Dental 
and skeletal inventories of the remains were produced by 
civilian embalmers and AGRS personnel. Stature estimates 
from long bone lengths were also recorded at this time. The 
osteological and dental expertise of the individuals analyzing 
the remains at the mausoleum during this time is unknown. 
Mausoleum staff compared Cabanatuan casualty records to 
skeletal and dental remains and forwarded identification rec-
ommendations to Memorial Division staff located in Wash-
ington, DC. Memorial Division staff then either approved or 
disapproved the identification. During this time, many iden-
tifications were rejected by the Memorial Division staff, 
often on the grounds that dental records were incomplete and 
potentially matched several different sets of remains (Harris & 
Beckenbaugh 2014).

1950– 1951

In May 1950 the Memorial Division implemented a focused 
project dedicated to identifying the Cabanatuan remains. It 
consisted of the Cabanatuan Project team located in Wash-
ington, DC, and the field office staff located with the Caba-
natuan remains at the AGRS Mausoleum in Manila.

The project team created and worked with documen-
tation of both the skeletal remains and the Cabanatuan 
casualties. They created a chronological roster of deaths at 
Cabanatuan based on the notes and records of the POWs 
keeping track of the burials at the camp. During this process 
the project team discovered that individuals were buried 
together in CGs based on the 24- hour period when bodies 
were collected at the morgue, and not necessarily the same 
24- hour period that included the hour and date of their death. 
This difference means that burials at Cabanatuan were not 
systematically conducted based on hour and date of death. 
While this distinction may seem minor, it did affect how 
individuals were grouped for eventual burial. With this 
information the team created a new roster that grouped indi-
viduals by accountable burial period, and this new roster was 
used for all subsequent identification work. In addition, the 
Cabanatuan Project team assembled physical and dental 
information for each casualty.

The project team attempted to reconcile casualty records 
with unknown skeletal remains on the basis of burial period, 
CG association, age, stature, and dentition. They directed field 
office staff to examine particular sets of remains, and also 
asked them to consolidate extra skeletal elements into other 



Megyesi 117

unknown remains in order to make the number of skeletal 
sets add up to the number of individuals that should have been 
in a particular CG (Harris & Beckenbaugh 2014). The con-
solidations and movement of remains during this phase of 
the Cabanatuan analysis served to further commingle indi-
viduals both within and between CGs.

The field office staff did not have access to the casualty 
records and proceeded at the direction of the project team. 
During this time, the first physical anthropologists were 
employed at the mausoleum. They examined remains in 
response to requests from the project team to look for partic-
ular traits or trauma or to segregate/consolidate remains the 
project team believed were commingled. They did not make 
direct comparisons between unknown skeletal remains and 
unidentified individuals.

The project team recognized that previous misidenti-
fications were causing serious downstream effects in the 
identification effort. These effects created several interlac-
ing problems. First, casualty records of a misidentified indi-
vidual would be incorrectly excluded when comparing 
unknown remains to individuals. Second, a set of skeletal 
remains that in actuality belonged to a misidentified indi-
vidual would continue to be included in these same compar-
isons. And finally, the remains that were misidentified and 
subsequently buried were no longer available to compare to 
casualty records. In all cases, the correct match between skel-
etal remains and casualty records would no longer be possi-
ble by the project team. An interim report submitted by the 
project team dated 13 April 1951 outlines that suspected 
misidentifications could affect approximately 1,319 sets of 
remains, just under half of the number of total deaths at 
Cabanatuan (Lee 1951).

In October 1951, a review board that included Dr. Mil-
dred Trotter visited Manila to make recommendations on 
how to proceed with further identifications. Dr. Trotter wrote:

During this entire period, I have learned some of the 
details of the history of these remains since they were 
first buried in 1942. This history includes a record of 
burial, disinterment, reburial, etc., etc., a series of pro-
cessings with resultant papers for three or four or per-
haps more successive years; signatures on the papers 
which do not carry weight scientifically; identifica-
tion made and the next of kin notified; questioning of 
the identification with recommendations for correc-
tion by personnel who study the papers at a distance of 
more than 8,000 miles from the remains. (Trotter 1951)

In many cases, the review board could not scientifically 
substantiate pending identifications when the personnel 
records were compared directly with the skeletal remains. 
They noted that the remains were very commingled and 
expressed concern with elements being removed or added 
to skeletal sets. In light of these findings, the review board 

recommended that all identifications cease (Trotter 1951). 
Subsequently, the remaining unknowns were buried in 
what is now the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial 
(MACM) in the Philippines. Historians estimate that 
between 990 and 1,006 unresolved casualties from Caba-
natuan are currently at the MACM, represented by approx-
imately 936 graves (Harris & Beckenbaugh 2014).

Present- Day Analysis

The Cabanatuan Project is currently housed at the DPAA 
Laboratory in Hawai’i and represents one of several large 
commingled human remains projects that the agency is cur-
rently managing. Disinterments at MACM are ongoing, 
with planning in progress to possibly disinter all unresolved 
Cabanatuan losses. As of July 2018, 87 caskets have been 
disinterred. The issues that Dr. Trotter noted in 1951 still 
apply to the remains today, and the path forward to identify-
ing the Cabanatuan remains must resolve both the commin-
gling and the effects of prior misidentifications. A recent 
identification of an individual from Cabanatuan illustrates 
how historical research, anthropological analysis, and DNA 
are used to untangle the effects of commingling and account 
for past misidentifications.

CG 717 was originally associated with 14 individuals 
who were buried at the prison camp cemetery on 19 Novem-
ber 1942. According to the Cabanatuan burial roster, Pfc 
Alpha (not his real name) died on 19 November 1942 and was 
buried in CG 717. The Office of the Quartermaster General 
later identified skeletal remains as Pfc Alpha based on den-
tal comparison on 29 October 1946. The remains identified 
as Pfc Alpha were buried in a family plot in the United States 
in 1949. The skeletal elements buried include a nearly com-
plete cranium, dental remains, mandible, clavicles, long 
bones, and pelvis (Fig. 3). Three other individuals associated 
with CG 717 were also identified in the late 1940s during the 
initial analysis of the Cabanatuan remains.

The remaining 10 individuals were buried as unknowns 
at the MACM in the early 1950s. In August 2014, 10 caskets 
associated with CG 717 were disinterred from the MACM 
and sent to the DPAA Laboratory in Hawai’i for analysis and 
eventual identification.

Anthropological and DNA analysis of the 10 caskets 
from CG 717 show that they are extremely commingled, and 
as of May 2018 there are 15 mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) 
sequences represented in the 10 caskets. These include 
sequences that are consistent with individuals who were pre-
viously identified in the late 1940s, sequences that are con-
sistent with the historical roster of individuals associated 
with CG 717, and sequences that have no match in the current 
family reference sample database for Cabanatuan losses. 
Skeletal elements with a DNA sequence consistent with 
family reference samples for Pfc Alpha are present in three 



118 Identifying Cabanatuan Remains

FIG. 3—Skeletal homunculus of remains buried as Pfc Alpha in 1949. Shaded areas represent absent portions.



Megyesi 119

FIG. 4—Skeletal diagram illustrating commingling present in one of the 
three caskets in which remains consistent with Pfc Alpha were located. 
Each color represents a different mtDNA sequence.

analysis of these remains by DPAA odontologists confirmed 
that they do not match the available records for Pfc Alpha. 
Currently, mtDNA testing has been inconclusive, and further 
testing is pending.

Challenges

The Cabanatuan remains are buried in individual caskets, yet 
they represent a highly commingled assemblage. The remains 
were commingled during the various historical processing 
and identification efforts. Misidentifications during the histor-
ical analysis of the assemblage caused cascading effects that 

FIG. 5—Skeletal diagram illustrating commingling present in one of the 
three caskets in which remains consistent with Pfc Alpha were located. 
Each color represents a different mtDNA sequence.

different caskets (Figs. 4, 5, and 6). These elements include 
a cranium, dentition, clavicle, long bones, and pelvis, and they 
duplicate remains that were previously identified and buried 
as Pfc Alpha in 1949. The dental remains are consistent with 
available dental records for Pfc Alpha. The DPAA Labora-
tory identified Pfc Alpha in 2016 based on DNA and dental 
analysis, and his primary next of kin has been notified.

The remains buried in the United States as Pfc Alpha in 
1949 were misidentified in the late 1940s, during the histor-
ical period, when non- experts were performing analyses. 
These remains were exhumed and sent to the DPAA Labo-
ratory in 2016. The skeletal MNI of the set of remains pres-
ent in the casket is two, based on element duplication. Dental 



120 Identifying Cabanatuan Remains

FIG. 6—Skeletal diagram illustrating commingling present in one of 
three caskets in which remains consistent with Pfc Alpha were located. 
Each color represents a different mtDNA sequence.

could not be rectified at the time. Identifications of the Caba-
natuan remains present unique challenges that require under-
standing the history and circumstances of the remains currently 
buried as unknowns and the remains that were identified in 
the 1940s. Part of the current identification process requires 
delving into past identifications made nearly 70 years ago 
under different standards and by non- experts. Eventual iden-
tification of all the Cabanatuan unknowns will need to con-
sider the large number of misidentified individuals buried 
across the United States. The unknowns buried at MACM 
represent only a portion of those who died at Cabanatuan, 
adding to the complexity of unraveling future identifications. 

The historically documented practice of consolidating skele-
tal elements in order to reconcile the number of sets of skeletal 
remains for each CG complicates the magnitude of commin-
gling. Working from a historical shortlist of individuals 
recorded in a particular CG, we can use biological profile, den-
tal records, and DNA to positively identify individuals and 
exclude others. As of January 2018 a total of 13 identifications 
have been made by the DPAA Laboratory from the Cabanat-
uan Project using this combined methodology.

Acknowledgments

The large commingled projects at the DPAA Laboratories are 
only possible with the combined efforts of many people from 
various DPAA directorates and other agencies. Larry Adkin-
son and Bobby Bell of the American Battle Monuments 
Commission, Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, 
continue to provide support to the DPAA teams deploying 
to the Philippines for the ongoing Cabanatuan disinterments. 
Suni Edson of the Armed Forces DNA Identification Labo-
ratory is crucial to the effort to yield DNA sequences from 
the Cabanatuan remains. Sarah Richer is part of the Caba-
natuan Project team and does a variety of analytical tasks in 
support of the current identification effort. Jennie Jin, 
Rebecca Taylor, Carrie Brown, and Laurel Freas are always 
a source of good advice, solutions, and reality checks.

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