Remains of airman killed in World War II to be returned to his Georgia hometown for burial

More than 80 years after his death, the remains of a U.S. Army airman killed in World War II are coming home to his family in Georgia.

Authorities with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said anthropological and DNA analysis helped identify U.S. Air Forces Pvt. Bennett H. Waters, a resident of Blackshear, Georgia.

The agency says that the 26-year-old was assigned to the 17th Bombardment Squadron, 27th Bombardment Group on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines in 1942.

During his time in the region, authorities say Waters was taken as a prisoner of war by the Empire of Japan and held in the Philippines until 1944, when the Japanese military attempted to relocate him and other POWs on the transport ship Oryoku Maru.

On Dec. 14, 1944, Allied troops, who were unaware that POWs were on the ship, bombed the Oryoku Maru, sinking it in Subic Bay. Waters survived the bombing and was placed on another ship, the Enoura Maru. That ship was attacked and sunk by Allied aircraft while anchored in what is now Taiwan. The Japanese government reported that Waters died aboard the ship on Jan. 9, 1945.

After the end of the war, an American Graves Registration Command Search and Recovery Team exhumed a mass grave in the area, recovering 311 bodies, but the remains could not be identified at the time. The remains were buried as "Unknowns" at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.  

Starting in 2022, the DPAA disinterred the "Unknowns" linked to the Enoura Maru's sinking and sent them to the agency's laboratory for analysis. That eventually led authorities to identify a set of remains as those of Waters.

Waters's name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial in the Philippines. To indicate he has been accounted for, a rosette will be placed next to his name.

The agency says Waters will be buried in his hometown at a future date.