Lost in 1942, WWII Soldier Returns Home to Albuquerque for Final Rest
Dubois entered the U.S. Army from New Mexico and served with the 200th Coast Artillery Regiment in the Philippines during World War II. He was captured following the American surrender of the Bataan Peninsula on April 9, 1942, and forced on the Bataan Death March.
He was ultimately interned in the notorious Cabanatuan Prison Camp in Nueva Ecija Province, where he died on July 4, 1942.
At its peak, Cabanatuan held approximately 8,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war who were captured during and after the Fall of Bataan. Conditions at the camp were poor, with food and water extremely limited, leading to widespread malnutrition and outbreaks of malaria and dysentery.
By the time the camp was liberated in early 1945, approximately 2,800 Americans had died at Cabanatuan. Dubois was buried at the local Cabanatuan Camp Cemetery along with other deceased American POWs.
Following the war, American Graves Registration Service personnel exhumed those buried in a communal grave at the Cabanatuan cemetery and relocated the remains to a temporary U.S. military mausoleum near Manila.
The AGRS team designated the grave used for service members, like Dubois, who died on Jul 4-5, 1942, as Common Grave 409. From that grave, they recovered 34 sets of remains.
Those sets of remains which could not be identified at the time were buried as Unknowns at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial. In November 2019 and January 2020, as part of the Cabanatuan Project, the unidentified remains associated with Common Grave 409 were disinterred and sent to the DPAA laboratory for scientific analysis.
There, the laboratory analysis and total circumstantial evidence available identified one set of these unknown remains as those of Dubois.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency accounted for DuBois on April 22, 2026.
For more information on DPAA’s efforts to locate and identify Pierce, please visit: [https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaProfile?id=a0Jt0000000Xhp5EAC](https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaProfile?id=a0Jt0000000Xhp5EAC)
U.S. Army Human Resources Command’s Past Conflict Repatriations Branch plays a vital role in the process of identifying, locating and contacting subsequent generation family members of Soldiers missing or killed in action during WWII and the Korean War to positively identify previously undiscovered or unknown remains.
Media interested in covering and/or obtaining more information about the funeral and interment should contact French Funerals & Cremations, 505-843-6333.
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