Lincoln County Nebraska

Bernard J. Murphy from Nebraska, Lincoln county.

Service era: World War II

Date of death: Thursday, July 16, 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. Corporal Bernard J. Murphy entered the U.S. Army Air Forces from Nebraska and served with the 34th Pursuit Squadron of the 24th Pursuit Group in the Philippines during World War II. The 34th was stationed at Del Carmen Field on Luzon Island when the Japanese attacked U.S. military bases in the Pacific in December 1941. After the Japanese destroyed the unit’s aircraft on the ground at Del Carmen, the men of the 34th served as infantry during the Battle of Bataan. When U.S. troops in Bataan surrendered to the Japanese on April 9, 1941, they were forced on the Bataan Death March. They went first to Camp O’Donnell in Tarlac Province and from there to the Cabanatuan Prison Camp in Nueva Ecija, where Corporal Murphy died of malaria on July 16, 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, Corporal Murphy is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency