Walker, James M.
Army Corporal

James M. Walker from Oklahoma, Pawnee county.

Service era: World War II

Date of death: Friday, January 1, 1943
Death details:

On March 19, 2025, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of Cpl. James M. Walker, missing from World War II.

Walker entered the U.S. Army from Oklahoma and served with Company E, 2nd Battalion, 31st Infantry 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 of dysentery on January 1, 1943. At its peak, Cabanatuan held approximately 8,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war that 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. PFC Harris was buried in Common Grave 822 at the local Cabanatuan Camp Cemetery along with other deceased American POWs. 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. One of the sets of remains from Common Grave 822 was identified, but the rest were declared unidentifiable and were buried at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial as Unknowns. In 2020, as part of the Cabanatuan Project, the remains associated with Common Grave 822 were disinterred and sent to the DPAA laboratory for analysis. The laboratory analysis and the totality of the circumstantial evidence available established an association between one set of these unknown remains and Walker.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency