U.S. Army Pfc Richard G. Pitsor, WWI POW, to be buried at Fort Bayard National Cemetery by Baca's Funeral Home at 1100 on April 26, 2024
WASHINGTON –
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced today that U.S. Army Pfc. Richard G. Pitsor, 18, of Ft. Bayard, New Mexico, who was captured and died as a prisoner of war during World War II, was accounted for March 20, 2023.
In late 1941, Pitsor was a member of G Company of the 200th Coast Artillery Regiment, when Japanese forces invaded the Philippine Islands in December. Intense fighting continued until the surrender of the Bataan peninsula on April 9, 1942, and of Corregidor Island on May 6, 1942.
Thousands of U.S. and Filipino service members were captured and interned at POW camps. Pitsor was among those reported captured when U.S. forces in Bataan surrendered to the Japanese. They were subjected to the 65-mile Bataan Death March and then held at the Cabanatuan POW camp. More than 2,500 POWs perished in this camp during the war.
According to prison camp and other historical records, Pitsor died Aug. 28,1942, and was buried along with other deceased prisoners in the local Cabanatuan Camp Cemetery in Common Grave 305.
Following the war, American Graves Registration Service (AGRS) personnel exhumed those buried at the Cabanatuan cemetery and relocated the remains to a temporary U.S. military mausoleum near Manila. In 1947, the AGRS examined the remains in an attempt to identify them. Three of the sets of remains were recovered from Common Grave 305 but were declared unidentifiable. The unidentified remains were buried at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial (MACM) as Unknowns.
In January 2019, the remains associated with Common Grave 305 were disinterred and sent to the DPAA laboratory at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, for analysis.
To identify Pitsor's remains, scientists from DPAA used dental and anthropological analysis. Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis.
Although interred as an Unknown in MACM, Pistor's grave was meticulously cared for over the past 70 years by the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC).
Pitsor will be buried iFort Bayard National Cemetery, New Mexico, at 1100 on April 26, 2024
Parents
For more information, including a tiny photo of Pitsor, visit https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/56790415/richard_g_pitsor
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U.S. Army Service No. (ASN): #20843973
Enlistment Date: 01/16/1941
Battery G, 200th Coast Artillery Regiment
Richard G. Pitsor is listed as Died Non-Battle in the 1946 Army and Army Air Forces Personnel Casualty List for Grant County, New Mexico.
***I would like to thank usafdo Find A Grave ID 48612389 for adding their photo of Richard and the bio information above to this memorial in addition to linking his parents to it***
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The Cabanatuan Memorial is located 85 miles north of Manila, within the city of Cabanatuan, Luzon, and Republic of the Philippines. It marks the site of the Japanese Cabanatuan Prisoner of War Camp where approximately 75,000 American and Philippine servicemen and civilians were held captive from 1942 to 1945, after the fall of the Philippine Island during World War II.
The memorial consists of a 90-foot concrete base in the center of which rests a marble altar. It is surrounded on three sides by a fence of steel rods and on the fourth by a Wall of Honor upon which are inscribed the names of the approximately 3,000 Americans who lost their lives while being held captive. Co-located on the site are the West Point Monument, which pays homage to the 170 American and 6 Filipino graduates of the U.S. Military Academy who lost their lives during the defense of the Philippines or while prisoner of war at Cabanatuan and the Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor (a Filipino veterans organization) memorial which salutes their American fallen comrades.