It's hard to mention luck in the case of Army Pfc. Billy Ray Ball. He survived the Bataan Death March, only to die from dysentery as a prisoner of war in the Philippines.
Ball, 20, who grew up in the tiny southeast Missouri town of Matthews, was one of more than 2,500 Americans who perished under Japanese guard at Camp Cabanatuan. Many remains haven't been identified.
"We kind of got lucky with his," Army Sgt. 1st Class Diana Rosero, a casualty assistance officer, said of Ball. "He passed away in a camp where they did record keeping."
The U.S. government knew Ball died on Sept. 28, 1942. He was believed to be in Common Grave No. 437, along with four other service members who died around the same day. Right after the war, three of them were identified.
Not Ball, though. His journey had several stops to go before ending Friday at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery.
"Today, we welcome him back home to Missouri," nephew Steve Cecil said during a graveside eulogy service with five generations of family present.
He directed many of his comments to Millie Mae Harrison, Ball's 96-year-old twin sister, who was seated in the front row. She kept her brother's story alive more than 76 years with only a handful of photos and a few polished memories.
"She'd always tell us, 'This is my brother. He's coming back some day,'" said Dustin Hopkins, 30, a relative from Poplar Bluff. "Everybody thought she was crazy and here he is today."
With no luck identifying Ball and others right after the war, his remains were reburied near Manila, only to be disinterred once again a little later. That time, Ball's unidentified remains rested in a mausoleum and lab for study, according to military records. More service members were identified that round.
But not Ball. Commingled with others, he was reburied around 1950 at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, the largest U.S. cemetery on foreign soil. There are 17,201 war dead, including 3,744 unknowns.
Decades passed, and Millie Mae Harrison kept telling her stories, like the one about her twin brother disappearing as a toddler, only to be found asleep in a metal washtub in the yard. She talked about protecting him from older siblings and how Ball had an incredible appetite.
Without his remains identified, there was always room for her to dream big.
"She just felt like he was alive and still out there in those jungles and didn't know the war was over," Carolyn Duncan, 74, said of her mother. "She was hoping that he would be found alive or something."
About 15 years ago, Duncan boosted efforts to identify Ball once and for all. She wanted him found before her mother died.
In 2016, his remains were disinterred from the cemetery in Manila and flown to a lab in Hawaii. This time, with the help of DNA evidence submitted by family, Ball was finally found last summer.
Since then, family members have been trying to refresh his twin sister's memory for the funeral services. She has dementia and poor hearing.
"That's my brother," she said several times Friday, amid many invitations to military honor guard members to visit her Pentecostal church in Poplar Bluff. There's even a van that will come pick you up for services.
"Sometimes we shout," she told one officer. "God really blesses us."
Duncan, her daughter, brushed off condolences at the visitation.
"This is a celebration," she said.
Ball, not quite 5 feet 4 inches tall with glasses, was one of 16 million Americans who served in World War II. He was one of more than 400,000 who died. But he's no longer on the list of more than 72,000 service members who haven't been accounted for from that war, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, which has a $146 million annual budget to locate, recover and identify former service members.
"We realize the sheer numbers involved are daunting, but we can bring closure to individuals, and that's what it boils down to," said Charles Pritchard, spokesman for the agency.
Last week, Pritchard attended a funeral at Arlington National Cemetery for Pfc. Raymond Sinowitz, who shared a mass grave with Ball for a time. Rather than grieved, he said, family members at these kinds of funerals are relieved.
"What you see is more of a sense of completeness _ now I can finally rest," he said.
