Starr County Texas

Elias Villarreal, age 29, from Texas, Starr county.

Service era: World War II
Military history: 200 Coast Artillery Regiment

Date of death: Wednesday, November 11, 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. Private Elias Villarreal entered the U.S. Army from Texas and served with the 200th Coast Artillery Regiment in the Philippines during World War II. He was captured following the American surrender and forced on the Bataan Death March before he was ultimately interned at the Cabanatuan Prison Camp in Nueva Ecija Province, where he died of malaria, malnutrition, and dysentery on November 11, 1942. Private Villarreal 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 Villarreal is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency