Gebo, Perley
Army Corporal

Perley Gebo from Worcester County Massachusetts.

Parents: Frederick M. Gebo

Service era: World War II

Date of death: Friday, June 19, 1942
Death details: On May 21, 1942, Japanese guards conscripted (a forced enlistment) American prisoners of war (POWs) from the Camp O’Donnell POW camp for a road construction detail along Tayabas Road, near Calauag, Philippines. During the journey to their work site, the group stopped at the Pasay Elementary School, which was being used as a POW holding camp, to replace several unfit Camp O’Donnell prisoners on the project with newly-captured POWs from Corregidor. The number of prisoners exchanged is unknown, but the work detail arrived at the Tayabas Road site on May 29. Nearly three hundred POWs began road construction along the Basiad River to connect Route 1G (Old Tayabas Road) with a highway running north from Legazpi on the Bicol Peninsula. As work progressed, many POWs fell ill to malnutrition and disease. Over the next two months, Japanese guards sent the sickest prisoners 175 miles north to Bilibid Prison in Manila, though the number and identity of the POWs sent to Bilibid are unknown. The Japanese guards closed the project by late July when most prisoners became too sick or weak to work. Any surviving POWs were sent to Bilibid, while those who died while working on the project were buried either at the work site, at Bilibid Prison, or at other locations along the way. Corporal Perley Gebo, who entered the U.S. Army from Massachusetts, served with Headquarters Squadron, 24th Pursuit Group, in the Philippines during World War II. He was taken prisoner after the American surrender on April 9, 1942, and was forced on the Bataan Death March to Camp O’Donnell in Tarlac Province. While at Camp O’Donnell, CPL Gebo was assigned to the labor crew working on the Tayabas Road project. While working on this construction detail, he died from malaria and dysentery in the vicinity of Basiad on June 19, 1942. He was reportedly buried with a group of other POWs near Tayabas Road; however, he was not identified among remains recovered from the area after the war. He is still unaccounted-for. Today, Corporal Gebo is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Fitchburg Sentinel (1945)