TROY, N.Y. — The remains of another fallen World War II soldier from Upstate New York have been identified through DNA technology.
The lab at the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency has identified the remains of Air Force Lt. Joseph Burke of Troy. He fought in the Bataan Peninsula, in the Philippines, was held as a prisoner of war, and died at age 20 as a prisoner on a Japanese ship that U.S. forces attacked.
News10NBC has reported on several fallen World War II service members whose remains were identified decades later and returned to their closest living relatives in the Rochester area. That includes Private Robert Cash, who was buried in Pittsford in 2024 after being reunited with his descendants. It also includes Tech. Sgt. Lynn Farnham, who was buried in an unmarked grave in a French cemetery for 80 years, and Sgt. John Pagliuso of Wayne County, who was killed in a bombing mission over Papua New Guinea.
Scientists identified Lt. Burke’s remains last June using mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA analysis. After the war, the American Graves Registration Command found a mass grave with over 300 bodies in present-day Taiwan. However, they couldn’t identify their remains. The remains were taken to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii, and decades later, scientists began working to use DNA to identify them.
Lt. Burke was a prisoner of war on the ship “Oryoku Maru”, which the Japanese were using to move prisoners of war from Manila to Japan. The U.S. aircraft that sank the ship in Subic Bay was unaware that allied prisoners were on board, and Burke survived. He was then taken onto another ship, “Enoura Maru”, in modern-day Taiwan. He died in January of 1945 after U.S. forces also attacked and sank that ship.
He will be buried in Schuylerville, Saratoga County, on May 7.
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