DPAA Famweb World War II Home Page

Through its Joint Commission Support Division (JCSD), Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) provides administrative and analytic support to the U.S. Side of the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs (USRJC) and conducts research in Russia on missing U.S. service personnel. JCSD also assists the Government of Russia with efforts to account for its missing.

The DPAA started the 92nd Infantry Project in 2014 to account for the 53 soldiers from the 92nd Infantry Division, an all African American unit from World War II. Click below to learn more about the unit’s history and the DPAA project.

To learn more about U.S. losses at Pearl Harbor and the efforts of DPAA and its predecessors have made to resolve these losses, please click the button below.

Since the renewal of U.S. POW/MIA recovery efforts in the 1970s, the remains of nearly 1,000 Americans killed in World War II have been identified and returned to their families for burial with full military honors. This number is in addition to the roughly 280,000 Americans whose remains were identified in a massive effort immediately after the war. DPAA and our partners continue to build on over seventy years of investigative efforts with partner governments all over the world. Each year, DPAA plans multiple investigations of WWII loss sites to collect evidence, investigate leads, and conduct excavations.

At the war’s end, American casualties remained unaccounted for around the globe, some where they had fallen, some in the depths of the oceans, and many in temporary cemeteries scattered throughout the world where battles occurred.

Following the war, the United States (U.S.) Government launched a global initiative called, “The Return of the World War II Dead Program,” to locate aircraft crash sites, comb former battlefields for isolated graves, and disinter
temporary military cemeteries around the globe. The U.S. Army created the American Graves Registration Service (AGRS) to perform this task. Once remains had been recovered, they were transported to Central Identification Laboratories
(CIL), where technicians confirmed or established identifications of more than 280,000 individuals. The identified service members were then buried according to the wishes of their next of kin. The program operated from 1945 to 1951,
working until all known leads were exhausted. The Army program was a worldwide endeavor employing approximately 13,000 personnel, and costing $163.8 million in wartime dollars.

After the end of the official program for returning the dead of WWII, the U.S. Army Mortuary system continued to recover and identify smaller numbers of WWII service members. These identifications stemmed largely from reports of
remains discovered by the citizens of the countries where the casualties occurred. Upon receipt of such a report, a mortuary team would investigate, recover, and identify the remains. As a result, more than 200 additional service men
were identified between 1951 and 1976.

After 1976, the task of recovering and identifying the remains of WWII service members fell largely to the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii (CILHI). From 1976 to 2003, that organization sent recovery teams
into the field using anthropologists and odontologists to identify an additional 346 individuals. In 2003, CILHI merged with Joint Task Force-Full Accounting (JTF-FA) to form the Joint Prisoner of War/Missing in Action (POW/MIA)
Accounting Command (JPAC). JPAC accounted for an additional 300 individuals.

In 2003, historians at the Defense Prisoner of War Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) began to develop a comprehensive database of WWII service members whose remains were not recovered or identified after the war. This database
was a significant step in creating a comprehensive plan to research WWII missing personnel.

Historians from DPMO were primarily responsible for answering questions from family members about missing service members from World War II until January 2010 and the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)
2010. Responding to this law, the Department of Defense expanded World War II accounting efforts to more proactive case development. Historians and analysts at DPMO collaborated with JPAC in researching, investigating, and
nominating for recovery the cases of U.S. casualties still missing from WWII.

In 2014, the Secretary of Defense directed that DPMO and JPAC, along with the Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory (LSEL), be merged to form the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and reach full operational capability in January 2016.