Elliott, Roland C.
Navy Quartermaster 3rd class

Roland C. Elliott from Virginia.

Service era: World War II

Date of death: Tuesday, September 29, 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 and food and water supplied 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. Quartermaster Third Class Roland Charles Elliott joined the U.S. Navy from Virginia amd was serving aboard the minesweeper USS Finch (AM-9) in Manila Bay when the Japanese attacked the Philippines. The minesweeper continued to operate in Manila Bay until March 1942, when it ran out of fuel. The majority of the ship’s crew, including Petty Officer Elliott, were ordered to Corregidor Island, which they helped defend against Japanese forces until the Allied surrender. After the surrender, Petty Officer Elliott was taken to Cabanatuan, where he died of dysentery on September 29, 1942. He was buried in a communal grave in the camp cemetery along with other deceased American POWs; however, his remains could not be associated with any remains recovered from Cabanatuan after the war. Today, Petty Officer Elliott is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.

Source: Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency