BataanMissing.com
Manila American Cemetery
Grave A-12-195 where Bud Kelder
was buried as an Unknown
ABOUT THIS SITE
The information on this site was gathered as his family
searched for the remains of Private Arthur H. "Bud" Kelder.
Bud was stationed at the Sternberg
General Hospital in Manila at the outbreak of World War II. Upon the outbreak of war, he was consolidated
in to General Hospital #2 located on the Bataan Peninsula. After the April 9, 1942 capitulation of the
American forces in the Philippines, he endured the Bataan Death March, Camp
O'Donnell and, ultimately, Cabanatuan Camp #1 where he died on November 19,
1942.
Bud's remains, and those of
thirteen other men who died on the same day, were buried in the camp cemetery
grave number 717. After the American
victory over Japan in 1945 the cemetery was opened and the remains relocated to
temporary cemetery Manila #2. By
comparison of dental records, the American Army was able to identify the
remains of Harvey A. Nichols,
Juan E. Gutierrez, Lawrence Hanscom, Daniel C. Bain. Unfortunately, the Army managed to ship the wrong remains to
these families. All four of these men
were buried in the U.S. by their families in the belief that they had received
the remains of their family member.
The other ten men,
Arthur H. Kelder, Fredrick G. Collins, George G. Simmons, Evans E. Overbey,
George S. York, Kovach, John Harold S. Hirschi, Lloyd J. Lobdell, John W.
Ruark, and Charles M. Waid, were buried as Unknowns in the Manila American
Cemetery operated by the American Battle Monuments Commission.
In 2009, the family
of Bud Kelder began researching his life and obtained from the U.S. Army the
records of his death. These records
indicated that his remains had been buried and recovered from the Cabanatuan
Camp Cemetery and were among ten specific sets of remains not identified.
Other records
necessary to identify the remains of Bud Kelder were requested under the
Freedom of Information Act. The
Department of Defense refused to provide these records and the Kelder family
brought a lawsuit in Federal Court. The
records were ultimately received in 2012 along with thousands of other records
of WWII unidentified remains.
The primary reason
the remains of the ten men in grave 717 were not identified was due to the lack
of military dental records. However,
Bud Kelder's older Brother, Herman Kelder, had been a dentist and family
records indicated that he had placed distinctive gold inlays in to his
Brother's teeth. Only one of the ten
remains recovered from grave 717 had any gold dental work shown in their files,
although the documents showed that the teeth with gold inlays had disappeared
from the remains while in the custody of the U.S. Army Graves Registration
unit. Unidentified remains X-816
(Manila #2) were obviously the remains of Bud Kelder.
The evidence that
X-816 was the remains of Bud Kelder was overwhelming and far exceeded the
standard used by the Army in identifying the other remains. Most likely because current government
officials were aware many remains had been shipped to the wrong families for
burial, the U.S. Department of Defense, after much buck passing and excuses,
refused to return X-816 remains to the Kelder family. The Kelder family was forced to file a second lawsuit in Federal
Court and in 2014 the U.S. Government finally consented to exhumation of the ten
Unknowns from Cabanatuan Grave 717. Ten
anatomically complete sets of remains were recovered.
After nearly five
months, the Department of Defense, using outdated mitochondrial DNA
identification techniques, returned the skull and three long bones to the
Kelder family. These remains were buried
next to his parents as they had wished.
Examination of the
ten sets of remains revealed fourteen different mtDNA profiles and that the
remains were extensively commingled. To
date, the remains erroneously buried as Nichols, Gutierrez, Hanscom and Bain
have not been exhumed and transferred to the proper families. Only the remains of Collins, Simmons and
Overbey have been returned to their families for burial.
2,729 Americans were buried in two
cemeteries at Cabanatuan between June 3, 1942 and October 28, 1944. 1,756 of them were identified and buried as
directed by their families. 973 are
still listed as Unknowns, most buried in the Manila American Cemetery and a few
in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (The Punchbowl). It is unknown how many were returned to the
wrong families for burial.
Last
update: Feb 20, 2017
Copyright
© 2017 - John Eakin