Joseph A Gala, age 21, from Essex County Lynn, Massachusetts .
Parents: Frank B. Gala
Service era: World War II
Date of death: Friday, July 14, 1944
Death details: On Sept. 10, 2025, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency identified the remains of U.S. Army Pvt. Joseph A. Gala, missing from World War II. Gala entered the U.S. Army from Massachusetts and served with Company E, 2nd Battalion, 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional), a light infantry formation known as “Merrill’s Marauders” which was equivalent to a regular regiment in size and was specialized for jungle fighting behind enemy lines. From May to Aug. 1944. Allied troops, led by Merrill’s Marauders and supported by elements of the Chinese Army, attacked a much larger Japanese force at the strategic airfield of the village of Myitkyina, Burma, in a battle that came to be known as the siege of Myitkyina. Gala joined his unit as part of “New Galahad” replacements sent to supplement the original group of 5307th troops, “Old Galahad,” in May 1944. After arriving at the recently captured airfield in Myitkyina, Gala’s battalion advanced south from the village of Mankrin on June 16 against heavily fortified Japanese positions north of Myitkyina. Although the exact circumstances of his death were not recorded, the U.S. War Department declared Gala Killed on Action on July 14, 1944. The remains of servicemen killed during the battle were buried in at least eight different temporary cemeteries and numerous isolated burial locations, many of which rapidly reverted back into the jungle after the campaign, making it exceedingly difficult for American Graves Registration personnel to locate and recover them after the war. Eventually, all known burials were concentrated into the U.S. Military Cemetery at Myitkyina. In 1946, all of the remains at the U.S. Military Cemetery at Myitkyina were transferred to the U.S. Military Cemetery at Kalaikunda, India, after which those remains that could not be identified were sent to the Central Identification Laboratory on Oahu for further analysis. Despite the efforts of Central Identification Laboratory staff, a number of remains could still not be identified at the time and were subsequently buried as World War II Unknowns in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. In 2018, as part of the Battle of Myitkyina project, DPAA personnel began disinterring these Unknowns and transferring them to the DPAA laboratory, where some of the Unknowns were found to contain commingled remains which were consolidated into new sets. Based on the laboratory analysis, one of these sets of remains was identified as that of Gala.
Source: Nation Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Daily Item (1944)
