Top Photo: US Army Air Forces Technical Sergeant Truman G. Causey. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency

The remains of a Louisiana airman who was captured by Japanese forces in the Philippines and later died as a prisoner of war will finally return home.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced that US Army Air Forces Technical Sergeant Truman G. Causey, of Port Vincent, Louisiana, was accounted for on April 4, 2025.

Causey was serving in the Philippines as a member of the 17th Bombardment Squadron, 27th Bombardment Group, when Japanese forces invaded the islands in December 1941. After intense fighting, thousands of American and Filipino servicemembers were captured following the surrender of the Bataan Peninsula on April 9, 1942, and Corregidor Island on May 6.

According to the DPAA, Causey was captured when US forces surrendered on the Bataan Peninsula, and he was among the thousands subjected to the 65-mile Bataan Death March before being held at the Cabanatuan POW camp. More than 2,500 POWs would die there throughout World War II.

Prison and other historical records note that Causey died on November 15, 1942, and was buried along with other prisoners in the local Cabanatuan Camp Cemetery in Common Grave 721.

Causey’s daughter, Shearon Guidry, was only a few weeks old when the Japanese invaded the Philippines. She sat down with WVUE in New Orleans to tell her father’s story.
 

“My mother had always told me that the Red Cross had gotten in touch with him and told him that I had been born, and that I was a girl,” Guidry said. “I don’t know if he knew my name.”

Soldiers who survived the war later told the family that Causey had died of malnutrition at the camp.

After the war, the American Graves Registration Service exhumed the soldiers buried in the cemetery and relocated their remains to a temporary US military mausoleum near Manila. In 1947, the AGRS attempted to identify the remains, and five of the 15 sets recovered from Common Grave 721 were identified. The remaining 10 sets of remains were declared unidentifiable and reburied at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial.

Guidry spent her life looking for answers, writing to congressmen and the US and Philippine governments.

“He needed to be recognized,” she said. “He needed to have something my children could see and hang onto and know that he served his country.”

Decades later, in June 2018, the remains at the Manila cemetery were disinterred as part of the Cabanatuan Project and sent to the DPAA laboratory in Hawaii for analysis. Scientists used anthropological, isotope, and DNA analysis to identify one of the sets as Causey’s.

“I didn’t think it would ever happen in my lifetime, but I never gave up,” Guidry said.

Guidry told the television station that family arrangements are being made to fly Causey’s remains from Hawaii back home to Louisiana. He will be buried in Dubach, Louisiana, in November 2025, more than 80 years after his death.

 The National WWII Museum is honored to support the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency’s (DPAA) mission to offer “the fullest possible accounting for our missing personnel to their families and the nation.” The Museum participates as a host institution for DPAA Research Partner Fellows who support the mission by contributing research on missing World War II personnel.

For additional information on the Defense Department’s mission to account for Americans who went missing while serving our country, visit the DPAA website.

If you or someone you know is related to a servicemember who is still missing, please contact the appropriate Casualty Service Office to provide information and DNA to help bring these servicemembers home.