Remains of New Mexico soldier held captive, killed in World War II identified
CAPITAN, N.M. (KRQE) – A New Mexico native who was held as a prisoner of war and killed during World War II was accounted for in February, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced Friday.
U.S. Army Pvt. Ben F. Leslie, 31, of Capitan, New Mexico, was assigned to Battery H, 200th Coast Artillery Regiment in April 1942. The Empire of Japan in the Philippines held him captive from 1942 to 1944 when the Japanese military moved POWs to Manila for transport to Japan aboard the transport ship Oryoku Maru.
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Unaware that allied POWs were on board, U.S. carrier-borne aircraft attacked the Oryoku Maru, which eventually sank in Subic Bay. The Japanese government reported that Leslie died aboard the Enoura Maru on Jan. 9, 1945. He was declared non-recoverable on March 22, 1949.
In May 1946, Leslie's remains, which were unidentified at the time, were exhumed from a mass grave on a beach at Takao, Formosa. The 311 bodies were then buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP), Honolulu.
Between October 2022 and July 2023, scientists exhumed the unknown remains from and were able to identify Leslie's remains using dental and anthropological analysis, along with mitochondrial and nuclear DNA analysis.
Leslie's name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at North Africa American Cemetery, an American Battle Monuments Commission site in Tunis, Tunisia, along with the others still missing from World War II. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.
Leslie will be buried in White Oaks, New Mexico, in July 2025.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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