By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Defense Department officials have confirmed the remains of a young St. Joseph Army sergeant forced to endure the Bataan Death March in World War II have been positively identified.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency reports 22-year-old U.S. Army Sgt. Simon Garelick, a member of the Headquarters Company in the Philippines, was captured when Japanese forces overran the Philippines, forcing the surrender of U.S. and Filipino service members on the Bataan peninsula on April 9th, 1942.
Those captured in Bataan were forced to march 65 miles under brutal conditions to the Cabanatuan POW camp. More than 2,500 prisoners perished at the camp during the war. Prison camp and other historical records report Garelick died November 4th of 1942, and was buried along with other deceased prisoners in the local Cabanatuan Camp Cemetery in Common Grave 707.
After the war, American Graves Registration Service personnel exhumed those buried at the Cabanatuan cemetery in an effort to identify their remains. In 1947, the AGRS succeeded in identifying nine sets of remains from Common Grave 707, but declared the rest unidentifiable. The unidentified remains were buried at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial as Unknowns.
Another attempt at identification began in early 2019. DPAA exhumed the remains of seven Unknowns associated with Common Grave707 and sent them to the DPAA laboratory for analysis. DPAA scientists used dental and anthropological analysis along with circumstantial evidence to identify Garelick’s remains.
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