DENVER (KDVR) — A World War II soldier from Colorado was considered missing in action for over 80 years until he was recently accounted for.

U.S. Army Technician Fifth Grade Clifford H. Strickland, from Fowler, Colorado, was captured and died as a prisoner of war during WWII, according to a release from the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Agency. He was identified and accounted for in December.

Strickland was a member of Company C, 803rd Engineer Battalion of the U.S. Army when Japanese forces invaded the Philippine Islands in December 1941. He was among thousands of U.S. and Filipino service members who were captured when U.S. forces in Bataan surrendered to the Japanese in April 1942.

After the surrender, soldiers were subjected to a 65-mile Bataan Death March and were then held at the Cabanatuan prisoner-of-war camp. According to the release, over 2,500 POWs died in this camp.

Historical records show Strickland died on July 29, 1942, and was buried along with other prisoners at the Cabanatuan Camp Cemetery in Common Grave 215. After the war, American Graves Registration Service crews exhumed and relocated the remains there to a nearby temporary U.S. military mausoleum in Manila.

Five of the bodies in Common Grave 215 were identified in 1947, however Strickland was among seven who were declared unidentifiable.

Those unidentifiable remains were buried as unknown bodies at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial.

Despite being listed as unknown, the soldiers’ graves were meticulously cared for over the years by the American Battle Monuments Commission.

The remains from Common Grave 215 were once again exhumed in 2018 and sent to a laboratory. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency used dental, anthropological, and circumstantial evidence, as well as DNA analysis help from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, to identify Strickland’s remains.

Strickland was accounted for on Dec. 20, 2023, and he will be buried in Florence, Colorado, on June 29.