21-Year-Old WWII Soldier Identified 82 Years After Vanishing in Burma

Joseph Gala will return to his hometown of Lynn, Massachusetts, for burial on Thursday. The U.S. military confirmed the identity of the 21-year-old soldier on Wednesday, closing an 82-year search for a missing member of one of World War II's most famous infantry units.

Gala served in the 5307th Composite Unit, better known as Merrill's Marauders. The volunteer force was created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to execute a secret mission in the China-Burma-India Theater. Approximately 3,000 men signed up for the dangerous assignment, but only 200 survived to go home.

The unit marched 1,000 miles through the Burmese jungle to cut Japanese supply lines. Robert Passanisi, a survivor, described the terrain in 2013 as miserable. He noted that the march was among the most strenuous and difficult operations of the war.

Gala went missing on May 14, 1944, during an advance toward a fortified Japanese position near the village of Mankrin. The military declared him killed in action on July 14, 1944. No specific record of his death was ever made, leaving his family without closure for decades.

The Marauders captured the Myitkyina airstrip on May 17, 1944, after winning five major battles and 30 minor engagements. Sam Wilson, another former soldier, told the Army in 2016 that the unit was considered expendable. He said there was a plan to get them into Burma, but no plan to get them out.

Officials began exhuming unidentified remains from the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu in 2018. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency used dental records, forensic tests, and anthropological evidence to link the remains to Gala. The body had been transferred to the cemetery in Hawaii after being buried in military cemeteries in Burma and India.

The Pentagon ordered that no Marauder would serve in combat again after the war. Each surviving member received the bronze star. A 1962 war film dramatized the unit's journey through the jungle. Gala's identification brings a final resolution to a case that has stood for more than eight decades.