Great Falls Hero Finally Identified Decades After His Sacrifice

Great Falls Native And World War II POW Accounted For

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced on July 30, 2025 U.S. Army Private Leonard R. J. Jackson Was Accounted For on December 16, 2024.

Thousands Of Americans And Filipinos Were Taken Prisoner

In December 1941, Private Jackson was a member of the 60th Coast Artillery Corps, Battery L, when the Japanese invaded Philippine Islands. Fighting persisted until the surrender of the Bataan peninsula and Corregidor Island in April and May of 1942.

Private Jackson was reported captured when US forces surrendered in Bataan. Jackson and other service members were forced on the Bataan Death March for 65 miles and held at the Cabanatuan POW Camp #1.

Cabanatuan POW Camp #1 held over 8,000 prisoners of war during World War II. Over 2,800 of those American POWs died. Conditions at Cabanatuan POW Camp #1 were extremely poor with very little food and water, malnutrition and many outbreaks of malaria and dysentery.

Private Jackson is said to have died from dysentery on October 31, 1942. He was 22 years old.

It Took A Long Time, But This Hero Is Home

American Graves Registration Service exhumed the POWs after the war and sent them to a military mausoleum near Manila for safe keeping until they could be identified.

In 2019, as part of the Cabanatuan Project, the DPAA exhumed the remains of common grave 703 and sent them to a laboratory to be tested. With the use of  mitochondrial DNA, dental analysis, anthropological analysis, and circumstantial evidence, they were able to identify Private Jackson.

Private Jackson will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Sources: Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, KRTV