Merlyn K. Eby, age 19, from Deschutes County Bend, Oregon .
Parents: Mr. and Mrs. Vern Klum
Service era: World War II
Schools: Bend High (1942)
Date of death: Saturday, July 11, 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. Private Merlyn K. Eby, who entered the U.S. Army Air Forces in Oregon, served with the 409th Signal Company (Aviation), 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, Private Eby was assigned to the labor crew working on the Tayabas Road project. While working on this construction detail, he died from bronchial pneumonia on July 11, 1942. He was reportedly buried with a group of POWs northwest of a bridge and close to a river bank; however, he was not identified among remains recovered from the area after the war. He is still unaccounted-for. Today, Private Eby is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.
Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, The bulletin (1942)
