Remains of ‘Merrill’s Marauders’ Soldier Identified After 80 Years

The U.S. military recently identified the remains of Joseph Gala, a soldier from the famous ‘Merrill’s Marauders’ unit in World War II. His disappearance occurred over 80 years ago.

Joseph Gala of Lynn, Massachusetts, was officially declared killed in action on July 14, 1944. This was two months after he went missing during a mission in what is now Myanmar, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA). Gala was 21 at the time of his death. Although details of his death were not recorded, he was last seen advancing with his battalion toward a heavily fortified Japanese area near the village of Mankrin.

Gala fought alongside a volunteer infantry unit known as ‘Merrill’s Marauders,’ named after their commander. The battalion was called upon by President Franklin D. Roosevelt for a ‘secret and dangerous mission’ in the China-Burma-India Theater, described by the Army as the ‘forgotten theater.’ About 3,000 young men volunteered, and only 200 returned home.

‘Those that volunteered had no idea what the mission was going to be,’ Robert Passanisi, a surviving troop member, told CBS New York in 2013. Recalling the unit’s 1,000-mile march through the Burmese jungle to disrupt Japanese supply lines, he added, ‘It’s pretty well-known that nobody else ever did anything as strenuous, enduring, and difficult in such miserable terrain.’

‘Merrill’s Marauders,’ also known as the 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional), achieved a crucial success on May 17, 1944, when they captured the Myitkyina airstrip in Burma. They defeated a much larger Japanese army in five major and 30 minor battles.

‘We were expendable,’ said Sam Wilson, another former Marauder. ‘A plan existed on paper to get us into Burma, but no plan existed to get us out.’

Each ‘Merrill’s Marauders’ member was awarded the Bronze Star, and the Pentagon decided they would not be placed in combat again. Their story was dramatized in a 1962 film named after the unit.

After Gala’s death, his remains were initially buried at various U.S. military cemeteries in Burma and India. They were eventually moved to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii. In 2018, the DPAA began exhuming unidentified remains from the Punchbowl in an effort to identify more soldiers lost in Myitkyina. Through dental and forensic tests, as well as anthropological and circumstantial evidence, scientists identified Gala’s remains.

According to the DPAA, Gala will be buried in his hometown on Thursday.