I've been helping my granddad with family history for about a year now. He had an uncle who spent the entirety of WW2 in a Japanese prison camp. We know he was 7th Material Squadron at Clark Field when it was bombed, was eventually captured, and was liberated from Nagoya 10B Fushiki POW camp.

If I could request military records, would they include more than what I already know?

How difficult is it to request records if you aren't next of kin? Like I mentioned earlier, he was my granddad's uncle.

I requested records for my great grandfathers brother several years ago.

Took about six weeks or maybe longer, but I received a ton of information ranging from OCS graduation, MACR and information regarding his death along with the investigation that took place over it.

We went through the national archives.

I did the same as Irish for my wife's family member.

We got a copy of his service record, health records while in military, and also a copy of his notifications (that he was injured, and that he later died of wounds).

I think for you - it would be interesting to see the notifications sent to family, especially since he was MIA/POW.

You could also try Fold3.com. It's an online military record database ran by the ancestry.com folks I think. I didn't find anything new that I couldn't find on ancestry, but I didn't look too hard. It may help.