Kin’s search leads to American Cemetery in Manila, but authorities not convinced

In the early days of World War II, a baby-faced West Point graduate with a rifle in one hand and a Tommy gun in the other made a one-man attack in the Philippines against the invading Japanese that altered the course of the war.

Jumping from foxhole to foxhole in the jungle, he downed enemies with grenades, gunfire and eventually his bayonet before he was killed. The attack repelled an advance that delayed the Japanese for months, and within weeks the soldier, 23-year-old Lt. Alexander Nininger, was awarded the first Medal of Honor of the war.

In the decades since, he has been venerated with a statue, an annual award at West Point and even a Malcolm Gladwell treatise on human potential. But his body has not been found. The Army officially lists him as “non-recoverable.”

His family disagrees. It says the lieutenant’s bones rest in grave J-7-20 at the American Cemetery in Manila. For 70 years, the family has been pressing the military to identify the remains and bring the fallen lieutenant home.

Buried as ‘unknown’

Now, the family and six other families of soldiers buried as “unknowns” in Manila are suing the Defence Department to compel it to identify the bodies. In a complaint filed in a federal court on Thursday, they argue that by not using readily available DNA testing to identify the remains, the department is flouting its legal duty to track down “missing persons from past conflicts or their remains after hostilities have ceased.”

Among the missing dead are a defiant general killed by a firing squad after he refused to aid the Japanese, a colonel cut down by machine guns during the Americans’ last stand on the Bataan Peninsula and a private who died months later in a Japanese prison camp of dysentery and bayonet wounds.

In the confusion of warfare, all were buried in graves labelled “unknown,” but the families say that in the years since, they have compiled enough evidence to once again give names to the nameless.

“It seems like the least we could do,” John Patterson, 80, Nininger’s nephew, said in an interview in his study in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, where bookshelves sagged with research compiled in an effort to bring his uncle’s body home.

Dysfunctional agency

The target of the suit is the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, an arm of the Pentagon with a $115 million annual budget that is tasked with accounting for the roughly 45,000 recoverable lost service members dating back to World War II. For years, the agency and a group of agencies that preceded it have been plagued by reports of waste and dysfunction.

DNA extraction tough

The agency said connecting remains with lost fighters was a meticulous process that often took years. It has tried to streamline the effort, and identified a record 164 remains in 2016, but staff members warned in recent interviews that extracting usable DNA from 70-year-old remains damaged by the chaos of battle would be a plodding endeavour.

“We completely understand there is frustration and pain of families,” said John Byrd, director of the agency’s lab. “We are going to do the best we can.”

But many families have run out of patience. Nininger’s family has been rebuffed by the agency for decades, even though the family claims it can literally draw a map to his grave site and has provided DNA to make a match.

Nininger was an unlikely war hero. At West Point, the soft-spoken cadet from Florida gravitated to theatre and liked listening to Tchaikovsky. But when the Japanese stormed the Philippines shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbour, it was as if a switch flipped, his nephew said.

Unlikely hero

Nininger volunteered to go to a spot on the front lines that had splintered under the pounding of a larger Japanese force.

With a satchel of grenades and a gun in each hand, he crept through a grove of mango trees and surprised the enemy at close range. He was wounded thrice but kept going. Witnesses said, he killed three more men with his bayonet, then collapsed. He was wrapped in tent canvas and buried in a grave in a churchyard. A few months later, Americans on the island surrendered.

Ever since, his resting place has been in dispute. After the war, the Army assigned unidentified bones found in a churchyard grave numbered X-4685 and reburied them, along with thousands of others, in the American Cemetery in Manila.

Veterans from the lieutenant’s battalion told the family that the grave held the fallen hero, and Army grave technicians sorting remains at the time concurred. The workers concluded twice that X-4685 was Nininger, citing matching dental records and other details. But the central office overruled the identification, saying the bones appeared to be a few inches too short.

Mr. Patterson hopes a lawsuit will force the agency to find out. And in the process, he hopes Nininger’s case will compel the government to identify hundreds of other missing soldiers. “Once again maybe he can lead,” Mr. Patterson said. “This time from the grave.”

New York Times News Service