This WWII POW’s remains are in Idaho after being identified. Here’s the story
After nearly 80 years of being officially unaccounted for, 2nd Lt. Charles S. Atteberry is home in Idaho.
The U.S. government said this week that it identified the remains of the Wilder native, who died as a prisoner of war in January 1945 after apparently surviving the sinking of two ships during World War II. He was being transported to Japan on another ship when he died at age 26, according to Japanese officials.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency was able to piece together the man’s story through DNA testing and anthropological analysis on June 4, the agency said in a press release.
Atteberry was assigned to the 31st Infantry Regiment, Philippine Army on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines, according to the release. He was reported missing in May 1942, according to news accounts, and reported as a prisoner in December that year. He was held prisoner in the Philippines by Japan until 1944, when the Japanese military set out to transport thousands of POWs to the Japanese mainland while the war in the Pacific was ongoing, the release said.
In December 1944, Atteberry was put aboard the Oryoku Maru Japanese ship along with about 1,600 Allied POWs to head to Takao, Formosa, which is modern-day Taiwan. According to the National Archives, the Oryoku Maru did not make it far from land before U.S. aircraft, unaware of the POWs’ presence, attacked the ship on Dec. 14, 1944, sinking it in Subic Bay.
The archives stated that after the attack, more than 1,000 POWs ended up in the water as the ship sank, and many of them swam toward land, where Japanese military recaptured a lot. Atteberry was among those who survived and was recaptured.
The Japanese military took the POWs, including Atteberry, onto the Enoura Maru, and that ship landed in Takao in early January 1945. While docked, it was attacked by U.S. forces and sank on Jan. 13, 1945. According to accounts from Japanese authorities, Atteberry survived that and was placed on the Brazil Maru headed for Moji, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan, and he died at sea on Jan. 17, 1945.
The archives research indicates that of the 1,619 POWs who boarded the Oryoku Maru on Dec. 14, 1944, only 497 arrived in Moji on Jan. 29, 1945.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency release said witness accounts and reports vary after the sinking of Enoura Maru. Surviving POWs from the Brazil Maru said casualties from that ship were committed to the sea, but reports from the Japanese government to the International Red Cross contained many errors, including five individuals who were marked as “discrepancies.”
The American Graves Registration Service believed those five could have died aboard the Enoura Maru, and that Atteberry could have been one of them. Then after the war ended, the organization investigated missing American personnel, and in May 1946 its search and recovery team found a mass grave on a beach at Takao and recovered 311 bodies.
After unsuccessful attempts to identify them, the bodies were declared unidentifiable. They were later sent to Honolulu and buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also known as the Punchbowl.
From October 2022 through July 2023, the MIA/POW agency found unknown remains at the Punchbowl from the Takao mass grave that they linked to the Enoura Maru. The agency used “anthropological analysis and circumstantial evidence,” along with Y-chromosome DNA analysis, to identify Atteberry among those remains.
Atteberry’s name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial in the Philippines. Now, a rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate his remains have been accounted for.
KIVI-TV Channel 6 reported that Atteberry’s remains were flown into the Boise Airport and escorted by an Idaho Army National Guard honor guard to a local funeral home, and his remains will be laid to rest at the Lower Boise Cemetery in Parma next to his parents.