Pfc. James Roger Burden

Parents: Fred E. Burden & Hazel M. Fry-Burden

Siblings: 4 sisters, 6 brothers

Nickname: "Roger"

Home: 611 Maple Street - Wapakoneta, Ohio

Occupation: truck driver

Inducted: 

    - U. S. Army

        - 22 March 1941 - Toledo, Ohio

Training: 

    - Fort Knox, Kentucky

        - radio operator school

    - Camp Polk, Louisiana

Overseas Duty: 

    - Philippine Islands

Engagements: 

    - Battle of Luzon

        - 8 December 1941 - 6 January 1942 

            - assigned to one of the three tanks of HQ Company

    - 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 on Corregidor

               - American artillery on Corregidor returned fire

            - San Fernando -POWs put into small wooden boxcars used to haul sugarcane

               - each boxcar could hold eight horses or forty men

               -  Japanese packed 100 POWs into each boxcar

               - POWs who died remained standing

            - Capas - POWs left boxcars - dead POWs fell to the floor

            - POWs walked the last ten miles to Camp O'Donnell 

POW Camps: 

    - Philippine Islands: 

        - Camp O'Donnell

            - unfinished Filipino Army training base 

            - Japanese put camp into use as POW camp

            - one water spigot for the entire camp

            - as many as fifty POWs died each day 

            - Japanese opened new POW camp at Cabanatuan to lower death rate

            - POWs too ill to be moved remained behind at Camp O'Donnell 

Died:

    - 8 June 1942 - dysentery

    - Approximate time of death - 2:30 PM

Buried:

    - Camp O'Donnell Cemetery

Reburied:

    - 22 October 1949

    - Greenlawn Cemetery - Wapakoneta, Ohio

        - Plot: K 145 

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