Parents: John Kovach Sr., & Margaret Kovach

    - parents separated - mother lived in Church Hill, Tennessee

Siblings:  3 sisters

Home: Step 99 - Portage Township, Ottawa County, Ohio

Occupation: Laborer - Civilian Conservation Corps

Enlisted: Ohio National Guard

Inducted: 

    - U. S. Army

        - 25 November 1940 - Port Clinton, Ohio

Training: 

    - Fort Knox, Kentucky

    - Camp Polk, Louisiana

Overseas Duty: 

    - Philippine Islands:

        - Ft. Stotsenburg

Engagements:

    - Battle of Luzon

        - 8 December 1941 - 6 January 1942

    - Battle of Bataan

        - 7 January 1942 - 9 April 1942 

Prisoner of War: 

    - 9 April 1942

        - Death March

            - Mariveles - POWs start march at southern tip of Bataan
            - POWs ran past Japanese artillery firing at Corregidor
                - Americans on Corregidor returned fire
            - San Fernando - POWs put into small wooden boxcars
                - each boxcar could hold eight horses or forty men
                - 100 POWs packed into each car
                - POWs who died remained standing
            - Capas - dead fell to floor as living left boxcars
            - POWs walked last ten miles to Camp O'Donnell

POW Camps: 

    - Philippine Islands: 

        - Camp O'Donnell

            - unfinished Filipino training base
            - Japanese put camp into use as POW Camp
            - only one water spigot for entire camp
            - as many as 50 POWs died each day
            - Japanese opened new POW camp to lower death rate 

        - Cabanatuan #1

Died: 19 November 1942 - dysentery 

Buried:

    - Cabanatuan Camp Cemetery

Reburied:

    - American Military Cemetery - Manila, Philippine Islands 

Memorial:

    - Tablets of the Missing - American Military Cemetery - Manila, Philippine Islands

Note: Of the sixteen POWs John Kovach was buried with at Cabanatuan,  Only the remains

     of two could be positively identified after the war.  T/4 John Kovach Jr.'s remains lie in a

     mass grave, at the American Military Cemetery, with the remains of the other POWs

     who could not be identified.