Frutiger, Thomas W.
Army 1st lieutenant

Thomas W. Frutiger, age 43, from York County Red Lion, Pennsylvania .

Parents: William C. Frutiger
Spouse: Anne Frutiger
Children: Thomas W. Frutiger Jr. and Robert Frutiger

Service era: World War II
Schools: Red Lion High (1928), Lehigh University (1933)

Date of death: Friday, December 15, 1944
Death details: On Nov. 19, 2025, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency identified the remains of U.S. Army 1st Lt. Thomas W. Frutiger, missing from World War II. Frutiger entered the Army from Pennsylvania and served in the 454th Ordnance Company (Aviation) in the Philippines during World War II. He was captured by enemy forces during the Japanese invasion of the islands in April 1942 and was interned in the Philippines until December 1944, when Japanese forces in the Philippines began the transfer of 1,621 Allied prisoners of war to Japan aboard transport ships whose harsh conditions and extreme overcrowding led survivors to refer to them as “Hell Ships.” On Dec. 14, unaware of the POWs onboard, Allied aircraft attacked the Oryoku Maru in Subic Bay in the Philippines. Survivors of the bombing were put aboard two other ships, the Enoura Maru and the Brazil Maru, to continue on to Japan. During the journey, while anchored in Takao Harbor, Formosa, present-day Taiwan, the Enoura Maru was attacked by Allied aircraft. The Japanese government reported that Frutiger died aboard the Enoura Maru when it was sunk on Jan. 9, 1945. Following the end of the war, the U.S. Army tasked the American Graves Registration Command with investigating and recovering missing American personnel. In May 1946, an AGRC Search and Recovery Team exhumed a mass grave on a beach at Takao, Formosa, recovering 311 bodies. However, the remains could not be identified at the time and were buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu as Unknowns. Between October 2022 and July 2023, DPAA disinterred Unknowns from the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific linked to the Enoura Maru. The remains were accessioned into the DPAA Laboratory for further study and scientific analysis. There, the laboratory analysis and the total circumstantial evidence available identified one set of the remains as those of Frutiger.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Gazette and Daily (1945)