Lynch, Condia
Army Private

Condia Lynch from Wood County Bowling Green, Ohio .

Parents: Mrs. Fred Yarger

Service era: World War II

Date of death: Sunday, June 28, 1942
Death details: On Aug. 18, 2025, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency identified the remains of U.S. Army Pvt. Condia Lynch Jr., missing from World War II. Lynch entered the Army from Ohio and served with the Anti-Tank Company of the 31st Infantry Regiment in the Philippines during World War II. He was captured following the American surrender of the Bataan Peninsula on April 9, 1942, and forced on the Bataan Death March. He was ultimately interned in the notorious Cabanatuan Prison Camp in Nueva Ecija Province, where he died on June 28, 1942. At its peak, Cabanatuan held approximately 8,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war who were captured during and after the Fall of Bataan. 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. Lynch was buried in Common Grave 407 at the local Cabanatuan Camp Cemetery along with other deceased American POWs. Following the war, the American Graves Registration Service personnel exhumed those buried at the Cabanatuan cemetery and relocated the remains to a temporary U.S. military mausoleum near Manila. In 1947, the American Graves Registration Service examined and successfully identified 17 of the sets of remains from Common Grave 407. The others, which could not be identified at the time, were buried at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial as Unknowns. In 2019, as part of the Cabanatuan Project, the unidentified remains associated with Common Grave 407 were disinterred and sent to a DPAA laboratory for scientific analysis. The laboratory analysis and the totality of the circumstantial evidence available established an association between one set of these remains and Lynch.

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