Burlen Gaylord Johnson from Toledo, Iowa, Tama county.
Parents: Hattie Abbe
Service era: World War II
Date of death: Sunday, July 19, 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. Gunner’s Mate Second Class Burlen G. Johnson joined the U.S. Navy from Iowa and was attached to the US Naval Hospital, Canacao, on the western end of the US Naval Station Sangley Point, during the Japanese invasion of the Philippines. He was captured on Corregidor Island following the American surrender on May 6, 1942, and died of of diphtheria on July 19, 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, Petty Officer Johnson is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.
Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency
