Chronister, Mason F
Marines 1st lieutenant

Mason F Chronister from Baltimore, Maryland, Baltimore City county.

Parents: Anna Chronister

Service era: World War II

Date of death: Wednesday, June 17, 1942
Death details: Following the Allied surrender on the Bataan Peninsula on April 9, 1942, the Japanese began the forcible transfer of American and Filipino prisoners of war to various prison camps in central Luzon, at the northern end of the Philippines. The largest of these camps was the notorious Cabanatuan Prison Camp. At its peak, Cabanatuan held approximately 8,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war that were captured during and after the Fall of Bataan. Camp overcrowding worsened with the arrival of Allied prisoners who had surrendered from Corregidor on May 6, 1942. Conditions at the camp were poor, with food and water extremely limited, leading to widespread malnutrition and outbreaks of malaria and dysentery. By the time the camp was liberated in early 1945, approximately 2,800 Americans had died at Cabanatuan. Prisoners were forced to bury the dead in makeshift communal graves, often completed without records or markers. As a result, identifying and recovering remains interred at Cabanatuan was difficult in the years after the war. Captain Mason F. Chronister joined the U.S. Marine Corps from Maryland and served with Company B, 1st Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment in the Philippines during World War II. He was captured on Corregidor Island following the American surrender and eventually imprisoned at the Cabanatuan Prison Camp in Nueva Ecija Province. On June 17, 1942, CPT Chronister was on a truck returning to Cabanatuan from a work detail when he was killed during a guerilla ambush. He was buried across a creek from the Cabanatuan city dump in a grave reportedly marked with a cross. However, attempts to locate and identify his remains at the close of hostilities were unsuccessful. Today, Captain Chronister is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency