The last time Mary Ocheske and Ethel Smith saw their brother was shortly before he was shipped to the Philippines to fight the Japanese in World War II.
After more than 70 years, the three siblings will be reunited as the formerly unidentified remains of their brother, John Kovach, Jr., will be returned.
VIDEO: Mary Ocheske talks about the burial of her brother, John Kovach, Jr.
Mr. Kovach was one of 32 men from Port Clinton who served in the Ohio Army National Guard’s Company C 192nd Tank Battalion. His unit fought in the Battle of Bataan near Manila Bay in the Philippines in one of the bloodiest and most intense battles of the war.
Between 60,000 and 80,000 American and Filipino soldiers were taken prisoner April 9, 1942 following an American surrender. Mr. Kovach was one of 15,000 Americans forced to walk 65 miles on the Bataan Death March to Camp O’Donnell, a Japanese prison camp.
He died of dysentery a short time after his 20th birthday on Nov. 19, 1942. He was initially buried in an unmarked grave with 13 of his comrades in Manila and wasn’t identified until April 7 of this year.
“This whole event has shaken us up to the point where we are just so delighted to know he’ll be given this honor and be buried in Port Clinton where he was happiest,” Ms. Ocheske, 90, said. “Being in the tank battalion was a big project for John. He was just so happy being with these men who accepted him.”
The process to identify Mr. Kovach’s remains started in 2010 when a man from Texas, John Eakin, placed an advertisement in the Port Clinton newspaper looking for relatives of his cousin, who was buried with Mr. Kovach. Mr. Eakin fought for the remains of several soldiers from the same pit grave, including Mr. Kovach.
Jim Bell from the Army Past Conflict Reparations Branch then reached out to the sisters, both of whom live in Toledo. He supplied them with an abundance of information about their brother’s military career.
“Years later, the government contacted Ethel and I to have DNA tests, which we did,” Ms. Ocheske said. “By that time, these bodies had been exhumed from Manila and were being tested. They were testing all these men’s bones trying to connect them to similar DNA.”
Dr. Tim McMahon, lab director for the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, said his team of analysts partners with the Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency to identify remains of U.S. servicemen.
Mr. Kovach was identified using mitochondrial DNA testing, one of three DNA tests AFMES utilizes. One of his bones was sent to the lab, sanded down to remove the outer layer, then cleaned with water and ethanol.
“The analysts do a procedure to clean it, then we extract the DNA,” Dr. McMahon said. “The easiest way to think about it is if you take turpentine and drop it on the hood of your car, the paint would disappear and you’d be right down to the bare metal. We have a solution that when you drop it on the bone powder we make, it dissolves the bone completely and releases all the DNA into a solution.”
The solution is then filtered to reveal copies of DNA. Dr. McMahon said the lab has a 94 percent success rate for any sample tested for mitochondrial DNA.
Last year, 164 soldiers were identified.
“One of the nice things about this is we are bringing closure to families,” Dr. McMahon said. “Even though people lost loved ones 60-plus years ago, that pain is still there. Knowing their loved one is back in the U.S., it’s amazing to see the look on their face. You can’t explain how sacred of a mission it is and what an honor it is.”
Ms. Ocheske doesn’t have many memories of her brother. She moved to Gypsum, Ohio, at age 11 when their parents split up and while Mr. Kovach stayed in Port Clinton.
The next — and last — time they saw each other was five years later during a parade for the tank battalion.
“He saw my mother and I, he waved, and when the parade was over, he came and gave me a big hug and said, ‘Mary, you’ve grown up,’” Ms. Ocheske said.
Mr. Kovach wrote Ms. Ocheske a letter in October, 1941, which she still keeps in a scrapbook she started as a 16-year-old. He told his sister he was being sent to the Philippines.
“He wrote to me from San Francisco right before he left,” Ms. Ocheske said. “He said tell Ethel I said hello; I’m looking forward to seeing you again. He said I met a girl, and when I get out of the service, I’m going to ask her to marry me.”
Mr. Kovach’s remains will be flown to Detroit on Saturday, where his sisters and their family members will be waiting. The Port Clinton Police Department will escort the soldier back to his hometown.
Bataan Memorial Elementary School will be the location of a service for Mr. Kovach beginning at 9 a.m. July 10. He will then be buried at Riverview Cemetery and lie next to another soldier from Bataan.
“It’s going to be a crying occasion, I’ll tell ya right now,” Ms. Ocheske said. “I know Ethel and I will hug each other and be glad. We wanted to bring him back to Port Clinton where he was happiest with the tank battalion.
“I hope he’s looking down smiling and I hope our dad is right next to him with his hand on his shoulder.”
Contact Jay Skebba at jskebba@theblade.com, 419-376-9414, or on Twitter @JaySkebbaBlade.
First Published July 4, 2017, 4:00 a.m.
