A Mississippi native who died in World War II will return to his home state after a positive identification of his remains, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency or DPPA, announced Friday.

The DPAA is an agency under the U.S. Department of Defense that works to recover and identify missing military service members.

Staff Sgt. Alvin R. Scarborough, Dossville, was 22 years old when he served as a member of the U.S. Army Air Forces 454th Ordinance Company in the Philippine Islands and was reported as having been captured when U.S. soldiers at Bataan surrendered to the Japanese in April 1942.

According to the National World War II Museum, U.S. and Filipino forces held off the Japanese for three months despite being short on supplies. After surrendering on April 9, 1942, 60,000 to 80,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war were forced to march 65 miles under tortuous conditions in what has become known as the Bataan Death March.

In a news release, the DPAA said records show Scarborough was held at the Cabanatuan POW Camp, where more than 2,500 POWs died during the war. He died July 28,1942, and was buried in the camp cemetery in common grave 215.

Following the end of World War II, the American Graves Registration Service exhumed the Cabanatuan cemetery and moved the remains to a temporary military mausoleum near Manila. The remains of common grave 215 were examined in 1947 and five were identified. The remains that could not be identified were reburied at the Mail American Cemetery and Memorial as unknowns, the DPAA said.

The remains from common grave 215 were again exhumed in 2018 and sent to the DPAA lab for additional analysis and testing. From the remains Scarborough was identified through a combination of anthropological analysis, circumstantial evidence and mitochondrial DNA analysis, the organization said in the release.

“Although interred as an unknown in MACM, Scarborough’s grave was meticulously cared for over the past 70 years by the American Battle Monuments Commission,” DPAA said.

Scarborough will be returned to Mississippi and buried in Carthage at a later date.