More than 405,000 American Servicemembers perished in World War II and generally, the U.S. Army did an admirable job of recovering their remains. Unfortunately, they didn't do as good of a job of identifying the remains. More than 73,000 remain missing and more than 10,000 of these missing persons are buried as Unknowns in overseas cemeteries. That's 10,000 families who were deprived of closure in the loss of their sons.
In 2009, I stumbled upon the records of the death of my Cousin, Private Arthur H. "Bud" Kelder, and was shocked to find that the Army had known all along where his remains were buried. And, despite their promises to inform his family of any new information about his death, they had intentionally avoided doing so.
For the last ten years, I have been involved in obtaining the burial records from the U.S. Government and sharing them with the respective families. Most people are absolutely incredulous that their government could be so cruel as to not return these men who gave their lives for our country to their families for burial according to their desires and beliefs.
Recently, a friend asked me to give him examples of typical burial files so he could see for himself what had been done. After a little thought, I decided that four cases typified the Unknowns. I begin with my families' case as it is as simple as they come.
The linked files read chronologically from bottom to top (highest to lowest page numbers)
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Typical X-file with name association
Unidentified Remains Designated as Manila #2 X-816
bataanmissing.com/wpgrave/Manila_2_RP_X-816.pdfThis file is typical of most Cabanatuan POW Camp files and was the first Unknown disinterred from an American Battle Monuments Cemetery since the early 1950's.
The POW camp near Cabanatuan, Philippine Islands housed the survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March and Corregidor Island. Each day, all the POW's who had perished in the prior twenty-four hours were buried in a communal grave. After the war, the skeletal remains were removed to a temporary cemetery near Manila where they were either identified and returned to their families for burial, or they were buried as Unknowns in the Fort McKinley (now Manila American) Cemetery.
In 2009, the family of Pvt Arthur H. "Bud" Kelder obtained his Individual Deceased Personnel File (IDPF) and learned that he had been buried in communal grave number 717 as one of the fourteen POW's who had died that day. Four of these men were identified - incorrectly - and buried by their families in the U.S. The other ten were buried in Manila as Unknowns.
After bringing suit under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain documents pertaining to Pvt Kelder, family researchers obtained distinctive dental records that identified the remains designated as X-816 as those of Pvt Kelder.
In 2012, after the family's informal and formal requests for further investigation were rebuffed, two family members brought suit in Federal Court seeking the X-816 remains for testing.
The remains of all fourteen men originally interred in Cabanatuan common grave 717 were disinterred in August of 2014. To date, partial remains of ten of the fourteen men have been identified. Pvt Kelder's remains were commingled across five of the fourteen caskets due to processing and burial by untrained contract personnel.
Pvt Kelder's remains have been returned to his next of kin in three installments over five years due to inadequate laboratory capacity and capability at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory.
2,729 American Servicemen perished at the Cabanatuan Camps and more than 1,000 remain unidentified and buried as Unknowns in the Manila American Cemetery where more than 3,700 Unknowns are buried.
Kelder Individual Deceased Personnel File
bataanmissing.com/wpgrave/KelderArthur_IDPF_complete.pdfMisidentification Memo - Gutierrez
bataanmissing.com/wpgrave/Ex53_Misidentification_Gutierrez.pdfDetails of Cabanatuan Burials
bataanmissing.com/wpgrave/U.S.Casualties_Burials_Cabanatuan_POWCamp1_2017.pdfMedia Coverage of this story
bataanmissing.com/EakinVABMC/MediaLinks.htmCivil Docket for #: SA-10-cv-00784-FB-NSN
bataanmissing.com/FOIAsuit/docket7b.htmCivil Docket for #: SA-12-CA-1002-FB-HJB
bataanmissing.com/EakinVABMC/files.htmCivil Docket for #: SA-16-cv-00972-XR
bataanmissing.com/FOIA2/files3.htm