Chief Warrant Officer Nava was a member of Battery B, 38th Field Artillery Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division. He was taken Prisoner of War while fighting the enemy near Kunu-ri, North Korea on November 30, 1950 while fighting the Chinese People's Volunteer Forces as part of a United Nations Command offensive to advance north to the Yalu River. He died while a prisoner of war on May 31, 1951. Between 1990 and 1994, North Korea returned to the U.S. 208 boxes of commingled human remains which combined with remains recovered during joint recovery operations in North Korea between 1996 and 2005, included the remains of at least 600 U.S. servicemen who fought during the war. CWO Nava's remains were included in that group. CWO Nava's remains have been recovered and identified. He is interred at a private cemetery located at Calverton, New York.

Chief Warrant Officer Nava's name is permanent inscribed at the Courts of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial, at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, Honolulu, HI.