Lost in 1945, WWII Soldier Will Be Laid to Rest in West Virginia

FORT KNOX, Ky. – The remains of U.S. Army Air Forces Tech. Sgt. Raymond C. Richmond, missing from World War II, will be interred Nov. 14 at Salem Church of Christ Cemetery in Glen Easton, West Virginia. Services and interment are being coordinated by Grisell Funeral Homes.

Richmond entered the service from West Virginia and served in the 881st Bombardment Squadron, 500th Bombardment Group.

On April 1, 1945, he was the flight engineer on board a B-29 Superfortress when his aircraft was shot down during a combat mission to Japan. Richmond bailed out of the plane and was captured.

On April 16, 1945, he was transferred to the Tokyo Military Prison along with his fellow crew members.

He was in the prison on the morning of May 26, 1945, when an American bomber force dropped incendiaries on Tokyo and set a massive fire that destroyed the facility. Richmond was killed in the fire.

Following the war, the American Graves Registration Service recovered remains of U.S. service members from the Tokyo Military Prison, but they were unable to identify Richmond.

Unidentified remains from the prison were buried as Unknowns at the Fort McKinley Cemetery, now the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial in the Philippines.

In 2022, DPAA personnel exhumed 39 Unknowns associated with the Tokyo Prison Fire incident and accessioned them into the DPAA laboratory for analysis. There, scientists used modern forensic techniques to identify Richmond.

For more information on DPAA’s efforts to locate and identify Richmond, please visit: [https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaProfilePrintable?id=a0Jt000001DPk0pEAD](https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaProfilePrintable?id=a0Jt000001DPk0pEAD)

U.S. Army Human Resources Command’s Past Conflict Repatriations Branch plays a vital role in the process of identifying, locating and contacting subsequent generation family members of Soldiers missing or killed in action during WWII and the Korean War to positively identify previously undiscovered or unknown remains.

Media interested in covering and/or obtaining more information about the funeral and interment should contact Grisell Funeral Homes, 304-845-0400.

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