Merald W. Cooke from Vermont, Rutland county.
Service era: World War II
Date of death: Thursday, November 12, 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 and food and water supplied 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. Private Merald W. Cooke Jr.entered the U.S. Army Air Forces from Vermont and served with the 17th Pursuit Squadron, 24th Pursuit Group in the Philippines during World War II. He was captured in Bataan following the American surrender and died of beriberi on November 12, 1942, at the Cabanatuan Prison Camp in Nueva Ecija Province. 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, Private Cooke is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.
Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency
