North Dakota
80 years after his death, North Dakota World War II serviceman’s remains identified
FARGO — Relatives of a North Dakota serviceman who died as a prisoner of war in World War II finally have the answer they’ve waited so long to receive.
Skeletal remains of U.S. Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. Irvin C. Ellingson have been identified through new DNA technology at a forensic lab in Hawaii, 80 years after his death.
Lon Enerson, one of Ellingson’s nephews,
has led the family effort to bring his uncle’s remains home.
“We are overjoyed and relieved … It’s a long-overdue answered prayer,” Enerson told The Forum, from his home in St. Cloud, Minnesota.
Contributed
Ellingson, who grew up in Dahlen, North Dakota, a tiny community east of Devils Lake, enlisted at age 22 and was 25 when he died, Enerson said.
He was serving as a radar observer on a bombing mission to Tokyo on April 14, 1945, when the plane was shot down.
Ellingson parachuted to safety but was captured by the Japanese army and held captive at a Japanese prison along with 61 other American service members.
The prison caught fire a little over a month later, on May 26, 1945, after high winds fueled fires that were started by an American B-29 bombing raid over Tokyo.
None of the American prisoners survived the fire, as they were blocked in by Japanese guards, Enerson said.
The remains of more than two dozen American service members were identified in the aftermath but those of 37 others were buried as “unknowns” at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines, where they sat untouched until 2022.
Contributed / Ryan Earp
The remains are commingled, and the Department of Defense has a threshold for disinterment,
for at least 60%
of those veterans’ families to provide DNA samples in order to make matches.
Families pushed the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency to disinter those unidentified remains and bring them to a forensic lab in Honolulu, where the newest DNA technology
is being used
to identify them.
Enerson said his uncle is the third serviceman from the Tokyo prison fire to be identified in this manner. The first identification came in September 2024 and the second in January of this year.
Ellingson’s parents and all of his siblings are deceased, so the next of kin is the oldest nephew or niece, who is Cheryl Severtson, of San Diego.
Contributed
Enerson is fourth on that list.
Six groups of Ellingson’s relatives have visited the forensic lab in Hawaii since 2022, awaiting his identification, Enerson said.
Now that they have answers, some family members may return to the lab to sit privately with Ellingson’s remains, which will be placed on an army blanket, he said.
The family intends to bury Ellingson’s remains in the Middle Forest River Cemetery in rural Dahlen, alongside his parents and other siblings.
Contributed / Lon Enerson
Enerson said when that day comes, he’s been told Ellingson will be buried with full military honors, at government expense.
“We just wish his immediate family could have known 80 years ago, but this is the next best time,” Enerson said.
North Dakota
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OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Tony Osburn scored 27 points as Omaha beat North Dakota 90-79 on Thursday.
Osburn shot 8 of 12 from the field, including 5 for 8 from 3-point range, and went 6 for 9 from the line for the Mavericks (8-10, 1-2 Summit League). Paul Djobet scored 18 points and added 12 rebounds. Ja’Sean Glover finished with 10 points.
The Fightin’ Hawks (8-11, 2-1) were led by Eli King, who posted 21 points and two steals. Greyson Uelmen added 19 points for North Dakota. Garrett Anderson had 15 points and two steals.
___
The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.
MINOT — Minot’s District 3 is home to Reps. Jeff Hoverson and Lori VanWinkle, two of the most controversial members of the Legislature, but maybe not for much longer.
District 3, like all odd-numbered districts in our state, is on the ballot this election cycle, and the House incumbents there
have just drawn two serious challengers.
Tim Mihalick and Blaine DesLauriers, each with a background in banking, have announced campaigns for those House seats. Mihalick is a senior vice president at First Western Bank & Trust and serves on the State Board of Higher Education. DesLauriers is vice chair of the board and senior executive vice president at First International Bank & Trust.
The entry into this race has delighted a lot of traditionally conservative Republicans in North Dakota
Hoverson, who has worked as a Lutheran pastor, has frequently made headlines with his bizarre antics. He was
banned from the Minot International Airport
after he accused a security agent of trying to touch his genitals. He also
objected
to a Hindu religious leader participating in the Legislature’s schedule of multi-denominational invocation leaders and, on his local radio show, seemed to suggest that Muslim cultures that force women to wear burkas
have it right.
Hoeverson has also backed legislation to mandate prayer and the display of the Ten Commandments in schools, and to encourage the end of Supreme Court precedent prohibiting bans on same sex marriage.
Tom Stromme / The Bismarck Tribune
VanWinkle, for her part, went on a rant last year in which she suggested that women struggling with infertility have been cursed by God
(she later claimed her comments, which were documented in a floor speech, were taken out of context)
before taking
a weeklong ski vacation
during the busiest portion of the legislative session (she continued to collect her daily legislative pay while absent). When asked by a constituent why she doesn’t attend regular public forums in Minot during the legislative session,
she said she wasn’t willing to “sacrifice” any more of her personal time.
The incumbents haven’t officially announced their reelection bids, but it’s my practice to treat all incumbents as though they’re running again until we learn otherwise.
In many ways, VanWinkle and Hoverson are emblematic of the ascendant populist, MAGA-aligned faction of the North Dakota Republican Party. They are on the extreme fringe of conservative politics, and openly detest their traditionally conservative leaders. Now they’ve got challengers who are respected members of Minot’s business community, and will no doubt run well-organized and well-funded campaigns.
If the 2026 election is a turning point in the
internecine conflict among North Dakota Republicans
— the battle to see if our state will be governed by traditional conservatives or culture war populists — this primary race in District 3 could well be the hinge on which it turns.
In the 2024 cycle, there was an effort, largely organized by then-Rep. Brandon Prichard, to push far-right challengers against more moderate incumbent Republicans.
It was largely unsuccessful.
Most of the candidates Prichard backed lost, including Prichard himself, who was
defeated in the June primary
by current Rep. Mike Berg, a candidate with a political profile not all that unlike that of Mihalick and DesLauriers.
But these struggles among Republicans are hardly unique to North Dakota, and the populist MAGA faction has done better elsewhere. In South Dakota, for instance, in the 2024 primary,
more than a dozen incumbent Republicans were swept out of office.
Can North Dakota’s normie Republicans avoid that fate? They’ll get another test in 2026, but recruiting strong challengers like Mihalick and DesLauriers is a good sign for them.
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