Delbert Martin returned to Shelby County 70 years after being shot down in WWII

A Shelby County man has been laid to rest after being positively identified nearly 70 years after being shot down during World War II.

The POW/MIA branch of the Navy Casualty Office announced that Indiana native Delbert Martin, who died in aerial combat in the battle to secure Yap (modern-day Federated States of Micronesia), was buried with full military honors at Fairland Cemetery on Wednesday.

Martin was previously buried as an Unknown at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii before his identification. 

Martin  was killed in action flying over Yap Island in Micronesia on March 21, 1945, at the age of 23. His remains were recovered after 70 years, and he was buried next to his parents in Fairland Cemetery.

He is survived by his nieces, Kathryn Brown, Natalie Shepard and Barbara Martin, and his nephew, Scott Martin. After his death, his parents, J. Franklin and Anna Marie Martin, his sister, Scytha Mae Brown, and his brother, Robert Martin, died.

During recovery and identification efforts on the Yap Islands after the war, the American Graves Registration Service (AGRS) disinterred one set of unidentified remains at a location designated “173-Jig” on the Yap Air Gunnery Target Map. The AGRS designated the remains as Unknown X-397 Manila Mausoleum (X-397) and buried them at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial (MACM).

Based upon their research and expertise, historians at the DPAA concluded Ensign Martin was a historical candidate for these remains recovered from Gagil-Tomil. After laboratory analyses, it was determined that the skeletal remains share a DNA profile (mtDNA and SNP) with Ensign Martin’s relatives and align in expected biological profile based on skeletal analysis.

Martin was accounted for on June 18, 2025.