(Tribune News Service) — A Detroit soldier captured in World War II and who died while a prisoner of war has been identified and recovered, officials said.
Kenneth L. Kramer, 20, a private in the United States Army Air Force, was accounted for on June 30, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. The organization, a unit of the U.S. Department of Defense, works to find and recover missing American military personnel.
Kramer was a member of the 19th Air Base Squadron, 20th Air Base Group, when Japanese forces invaded the Philippine Islands in December 1942, the agency said last week in a statement.
Fighting raged on the islands until the surrender of the Bataan peninsula on April 9, 1942, and of Corregidor Island on May 6, 1942. Officials said thousands of U.S. and Filipino service members were captured and interned at POW camps.
Kramer was among those captured when U.S. forces in Bataan surrendered to the Japanese. He and the others were subjected to the 65-mile Bataan Death March and then held at the Cabanatuan POW camp, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said. It said more than 2,500 POWs perished at the camp during the war.
At its peak, Cabanatuan held approximately 8,000 American and Filipino POWs who were captured during and after the Fall of Bataan.
According to the prison camp and other historical records, Kramer died on June 29, 1942, from diphtheria. He was buried along with other prisoners in the Cabanatuan Camp Cemetery in Common Grave 407.
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A burial detail of American and Filipino prisoners of war uses improvised litters to carry fallen comrades at Camp O’Donnell, Capas, Tarlac, 1942, following the Bataan Death March. (National Archives)
