They want the body exhumed, tested for DNA and brought home to be buried with his beloved parents Julia and Herman Kelder, but the Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command — whose mission it is to find and identify the missing from America’s wars — has refused, prompting a lawsuit by the family.  After years of refusing to act, the U.S. military has reversed course and has decided to disinter the possible grave of Arthur "Bud" Kelder, a POW from World War II who is buried anonymously in an American war cemetery in the Philippines. “I thought it would be difficult to identify Bud’s remains but that was the easiest thing to do,” said Kelder’s cousin, John Eakin, who is suing the government for a timely identification on behalf of the family. There's no timeline yet for the exhumation, but if X-816 does turn out to be Bud, the family plans to bury him the family crypt in the Norwood Park neighborhood of Chicago where Bud grew up. Bud, an Army private, died in 1942 in the Cabanatuan POW camp in the Philippines and was buried in a common grave numbered 717 – all of which is known because the POWs there kept a meticulous roster of the dead. The remaining 10 Americans were buried as unknowns at the cemetery in Manila, lost to the limits of the day’s technology, a never-ending roster of war dead and confusion following the war. Kelder’s file indicated that the Army knew he was one of the 10 unknowns. Bud's cousin John Eakin began searching for his remains a few years ago. Scientific director and deputy to the command for Central Identification Laboratory operations, Thomas Holland, stated in a memo written Jan. 28, 2013, that the case did not meet the standard of “scientific certainty” necessary to justify disinterment for DNA identification. A Pentagon inspector general report about the mission's struggles is expected next month. "Exhumation of the remains of these unknowns is not being done because it is the right thing to do. He said the Defense Department had collected family reference samples of DNA for less than 1 percent of the missing from World War II at the time of his resignation.
– An anonymous POW buried in an American war cemetery in the Philippines isn't "X-816," it's Bud Kelder, say family members who have finally won their fight to have the remains disinterred. The 26-year-old Army medic survived the Bataan Death March but died in a POW camp and was buried in a communal grave along with 13 other Americans who also died on Nov. 19, 1942; four were later identified, but the remaining 10 were left in Grave 717. After carrying out their own research and studying declassified burial records, family members zeroed in on Grave 717, and "Manila #2 X-816" in particular—the only unknown in the grave that records show had gold inlays in his teeth, as Kelder did. But it has taken a long fight, and a lawsuit, to get the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command to agree to dig up the remains and carry out DNA testing, ProPublica finds. The military also plans to disinter the remains of the others in the grave who were never identified. J-PAC receives $100 million a year to do its work but only identified 60 service members last year out of the more than 73,000 Americans still missing from WWII. Relatives—and J-PAC whistleblowers—say J-PAC is choosing to ignore modern technology and war documents that could identify many World War II unknowns, Stars and Stripes found when it reported on the Kelder case last year. The cousin who did the bulk of the investigative work says that while the family is overjoyed that they could soon finally be able to bury Kelder in the family crypt in Chicago, the government has only changed its stance because of the lawsuit, not because it sees it as the right thing to do. "This will be a hollow victory for MIA families unless the US government undertakes substantial and meaningful reforms of the MIA accounting process," he says. (Meanwhile, rising seas are washing up WWII skeletons.)