75 years later, WWII soldier buried on American soil

ST. LOUIS -- Billy Ray Ball was a short, slim 19-year-old with thick glasses and a talent for the slide trombone in a family of musicians when he left the small farming community of Matthews to enlist in 1941.

He was sent to the humid rainforests of a country 8,000 miles away that he knew little or nothing about.

Pfc. Ball died as a prisoner of war in the Philippines in 1942, the second member of his family killed during World War II and whose body could not be returned. Cousin James Ball was entombed on a battleship at Pearl Harbor just months earlier.

The Secretary of War did not receive formal confirmation of Ball's death until 1943, nearly a year after he was buried in a mass grave with five other Americans who perished the same day.

A family celebrates

The headstone for Pfc. Billy Ball at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery.

Five generations of a family Ball never got to meet gathered Friday to celebrate his homecoming after more than 75 years.

The funeral service held at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery wasn't about sadness, according to his niece, Carolyn Duncan, who led a 15-year mission to bring Ball home.

It was about joy, as well as closure for Duncan's mother and Ball's twin sister, Millie Harrison of Poplar Bluff.

"I'm glad mom was there," said Duncan. "It was a celebration for the family."

Duncan accepted on behalf of the family Ball's medals, which include a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, as well as a document signed by President Donald Trump in recognition "of devoted and selfless consecration to the service of our country."

The casket of Pfc. Billy Ball is carried Friday into Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery.DAR/Donna Farley

"I feel like there's a calm, now that he's home. He's at rest where he should be," said Tammy Kassinger, whose mother, Billie, is named after her grandmother's twin brother.

The Rev. Stephen Cecil, Ball's nephew, said in a eulogy no one was happier than Aunt Millie to have him home.

"His twin sister kept him alive in not only her memory, but our memory," Cecil said, standing near a silver casket, surrounded by members of the Patriot Guard holding American flags. "She has loved him incessantly. She has missed him since Day 1."

Cecil's mother was Ball's youngest sister, and only 3 years old when he enlisted. She had no memories of her own to share with her children, Cecil said later.

In preparing for this service, Cecil said it was more difficult than any other he had presided over.

Reading the reports of what Ball experienced and how he died, transformed his uncle from the man in the picture on the wall, to family, said Cecil, who lives in Decatur, Illinois.

"Although he left his loving mother, she did not leave him," Cecil told the family members that gathered grave side, amongst thousands of grave markers for other veterans of World War II, Korea, Vietnam and other wars. "There's no doubt in my mind that our Grandma Ball prayed passionately for Billy from the day he left Matthews to enlist, until the day she received that horrible telegram saying your son has died.

"I have no doubt he felt her payers."

The road home

Josie and Forest Ball eventually learned their son died Sept. 28, 1942, in the Cabanatuan Prison Camp in the Philippines. He was listed as missing in action from May 7 of that year, the day after the headquarters detachment on Corregidor Island fell.

With the help of the International Red Cross, the American government was able to receive evidence of Ball's death in 1943.

Ball, 20, was buried in Grave 437 along with Cpl. Joseph Zinani Jr., and T.Sgt. Charles W.T. Rockwell, both of the 194th Tank Battalion, CMM Lada Smisek of the U.S. Naval Reserve and Cpl. Philips D. Martin of the Air Corps. Rockwell was also a Missouri boy, from St. Joseph.

This information was gathered through records kept by fellow POWs, as thousands died and were buried before Japanese POW camps located in the Philippines were liberated in February 1945.

Following the war, Grave 437 and others were exhumed and moved to a temporary U.S. military cemetery near Manila.

Three of the soldiers, Zinani, Martin and Rockwell, were identified from their ID tags.

The remains of Ball and Smisek could not be definitively identified and were reinterred in U.S. Armed Forces Cemetery Manila #2.

Josie and Forest Ball were told at one point, said Kassinger, that the Army could return their son's remains, but could not guarantee that they would receive the correct remains. Josie Ball told the Army not to do that.

In 1948, the family was contacted when their son's brown leather billfold and license were recovered. Forest Ball asked in a handwritten letter that the items please be returned to the family.

A gold band ring was also recovered for Smisek's family, according to a letter from a graves registration officer.

More attempts were made that year to identify Ball's remains. During the "chaotic" process, his remains and that of Smisek were commingled with three other as yet unidentified individuals from Cabanatuan Grave 439.

All of the remains were later interred at the permanent Manila American Cemetery at Fort McKinley in Manila.

This is where Ball remained until May 2016, when the Secretary of the Army granted permission to exhume the graves again, this time for DNA testing.

Samples from two living relatives were sent, including from Ball's brother Fred, before an identification could be made, Duncan said.

Ball arrived in Missouri by plane on Wednesday, where Kassinger and other family members waited. Members of the Honor Guard and Patriot Guard were there as his casket was carried off the plane, Kassinger said.

The service held Friday was unusual, according to personnel at Jefferson Barracks. Normally services are not held grave side, but because of the circumstances of Ball's return, permission was granted, officials said.

During the service, his sister Millie, wearing a red, white and blue scarf, accepted the flag from his coffin, saying often, "That's my brother. That's my twin." Millie, who is 96, has been given permission to be buried by her brother.

It's comforting to think that his uncle was never out of God's care, Cecil said, during the eulogy.

A mother mourns

Josie Ball (1893-1991) wrote this after all of her children were grown, or gone:

A house is not a home when loved ones are all gone.

A house is not a home when you are all alone.

A house is not a home with no one to cheer.

A house is not a home with no one to care.

But if we knew the Savior and always life for Him, one day we'll have a home in heaven. We'll not be lonely then.

Pfc. Ball's name is among those recorded on the Walls of the Missing at an American Battle Monuments Commission site with others missing from WWII. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he is accounted for, according to the military.

Family attending the funeral included: Millie Mae Harrison of Poplar Bluff; Tammy and John Kassinger of Poplar Bluff; Dustin Hopkins, 30, and Makenzie Hopkins, 6, of Wappapello; Jeremy Bell of Doniphan; Keith Nunn of Park Hills, Missouri; James W. Ball, and wife, Nancy, of Camdenton, Missouri; Amanda Ball-Peak, with husband, Marine Corp. Randall Peak, and son Carter, 4, of King City, Missouri; the Rev. Stephen Cecil and wife, Peggy, of Decatur, Illinois; Denise Schierhold of Evansville, Indiana; and Valerie and Warren Kaemmerlen of Sullivan, Missouri.