Sergeant Melvin Jones buried in Portales, 84 years after death

A New Mexico National Guard sergeant who died as a prisoner of war in the Philippines in 1942 was buried Tuesday at the Portales Cemetery, 84 years after his death. Sergeant Melvin Jones, born in 1919 in Clayton, New Mexico, had served in the National Guard’s 200th Coast Artillery Regiment during the Pacific campaign of World War II.

Jones’s unidentified remains were interred in Manila after the war. The remains were exhumed in 2018, and Jones was brought back to New Mexico last year.

He is now buried at the Portales Cemetery.