Underwood, Weber S.
Army Private 1st class

Weber S. Underwood from Union County New Jersey.

Service era: World War II
Military history: 28 Materials Squadron 20 Air Base Group

Date of death: Tuesday, June 30, 1942
Death details: On Nov. 21, 2025, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of Pfc. Weber S. Underwood, missing from World War II. Underwood entered the U.S. Army Air Forces from New Jersey and served with the 28th Materials Squadron, 20th Air Base Group in the Philippines during World War II. He was taken prisoner after the American surrender in April 1942 and was forced on the Bataan Death March to the Camp O’Donnell POW camp. While at Camp O’Donnell, Underwood was assigned to a road construction detail along Tayabas Road, near Calauag (present-day Camarines Norte province), arriving at the work site with nearly three hundred other POWs on May 29. As work progressed, many of those working fell ill to malnutrition and disease. According to prison camp and other historical records, Underwood died on June 30, 1942, and was buried in the Tayabas Road camp cemetery. In mid-July 1945, less than two months before the end of the war, an American Graves Registration Services (ARGS) team visited the site of the Tayabas Road camp cemetery and recovered what it believed were 40 sets of remains. Three months later AGRS personnel recovered 15 more sets of remains from the site and in 1948, a final AGRS search of the province, including the camp cemetery, brought the total recovered remains from the site to 62. Those set of recovered remains which could not be identified at the time were buried at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial (MACM) as Unknowns. In 2023 and 2024, DPAA exhumed the Unknowns associated with the Tayabas Road camp cemetery and sent them to the DPAA laboratory for analysis. Based on the laboratory analysis and total circumstantial evidence available, one previously unidentified set of remains was found to be that of Underwood.

Source: Defense POW/Mia Accounting Agency