Parents: John Kovach Sr., & Margaret Kovach

    - parents separated - mother lived in Church Hill, Tennessee

Siblings:  3 sisters

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 

    - Battle of Bataan

Prisoner of War: 

    - 9 April 1942

        - Death March

            - Mariveles - POWs start march at southern tip of Bataan
            - POWs ran past Japanesee 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 spiget 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 

Burial: Tablets of the Missing - American Military Cemetery - Manila

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

                 only the remains of two could be identified after the war.   T/4 John Kovach, Jr.

                 remains lie in a grave whose cross is marked as "Unknown" at the American

                 Military Cemetery at Manila.  The U.S. Military is now attempting to contact the

                 families of these men so that DNA can be used to identify the remains.