Rodriguez, Luis
Army Private

Luis Rodriguez from New Mexico, Eddy county.

Service era: World War II

Date of death: Monday, August 10, 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. Private Luis Rodriguez entered the U.S. Army from New Mexico and served with Battery A of the 200th Coast Artillery Regiment in the Philippines during World War II. The 200th Coast Artillery Regiment arrived in the Philippines in September 1941 and was stationed at Fort Stotsenburg on Clark Air Base. After Japanese forces invaded the Philippines in December, the 200th was ordered to the Bataan Peninsula where they participated in the defense of Bataan. Private Rodriguez was with his unit when Allied troops in Bataan surrendered to the Japanese on April 9, 1942. He and the other surviving members of his unit were forced on the Bataan Death March and ultimately interned at the Cabanatuan Prison Camp, where PVT Rodriguez died of malaria on August 10, 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, Private Rodriguez is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency