The U.S. military has identified a World War II soldier from Livingston County.
Japanese forces had captured John Ferguson, a Flanagan man who served with the U.S. Army Air Forces, following the Japanese invasion of the Philippine Islands in 1941.
Ferguson, 20, was one of thousands of U.S. soldiers subjected to the 65-mile Bataan death march and then held as a prisoner of war.
According to prison and other records, Ferguson died Dec. 10, 1942 and was buried with other prisoners in the Cabanatuan Camp Cemetery in the Philippines. The body was later moved to an American cemetery in Manila in 1950 after Ferguson and many other soldiers could not be identified by the American Graves Registration Service (AGRS).
The Defense Department’s POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) exhumed Ferguson's body in 2018 and sent his remains to its laboratory at Joint Base Pearly Harbor-Hickman, Hawaii for analysis. Scientists used DNA testing and other analysis to identify him.
The defense agency said Ferguson was accounted for on July 14, but it withheld publicly releasing his identity until Ferguson’s family received a full briefing.
Ferguson will be buried Oct. 1 in Gridley.
