#59. Return from the Zero Ward

Episode 59 – Kelder & Whaley

Please note, this episode contains descriptions of diseases and POW hospitals and may don’t be suitable for some audiences.

[John Eakin] “My dad and my uncles and you know, everyone in town Served in the military during World War two and there was only one member of my family that It didn't come back and that was Bud Kelder and I really didn't know much about Bud or about his life, and I thought it would be the logical subject, you know, for my research.
“The only thing that I knew about him was that when I was about 15, I accompanied my grandfather to visit his sister, my great aunt. And while I was there, I was looking at the pictures on her wall and I asked about the little boy. And she just choked up and couldn’t talk and my grandfather said, “That's Bud.”
“So, I didn't ask anymore. And when I got home, I asked my mother, “Who's Bud Kelder?” And she told me the story about the Bataan Death March and how Bud had never come home. And it had always been just a terrible family tragedy because they didn't know what had happened to him.
“He just disappeared during the Bataan Death March. That's all I knew.”

Podcast Welcome
Welcome to “Left Behind,” a podcast about the people left behind when the US surrendered The Philippines in the early days of WW2. I’m your host and researcher, Anastasia Harman. My great-grandfather Alma Salm was one of the POWs, and his memoir inspired me to tell the stories of his fellow captives.
It’s officially summer vacation in my house. The kids are out of school and our travel trailer is loaded and ready for some adventures. Which means I’ll be switching to my summer schedule – publishing an episode every other week (although there may be a few off weeks).

Today’s episode tells the story of 2 young POWs who fell victim to the Cabanatuan POW Camps’ infamous Zero Wards.
One of these young men had started his own fruit-vending business in the years between high school graduation and his miliary service. The other spent those years travelling the United States as part of carnival side shows as the “Man without a Stomach.”
One came home shortly after the war. But it took more than 7 decades for the other to make his way back to his family.
And today, we’ll discover the years-long fight to bring him home.

Let’s jump in.

Before the War
[Narrator] Silas J. Whaley was born on June 1, 1914, in eastern Tennessee to parents Mack and Pearlie Whaley. Silas was the third of their eight children. The Whaley family had deep roots in eastern Tennessee’s Sevier County, tracing their presence back to the 1830s when Silas’s great-grandparents settled there.
Silas grew up in a rural area, working on the family farm and exploring the hollows, streams, and fields near his home. He attended the Friendship Missionary Baptist Church with his family. In high school, he played football, and the 17-year-old even represented his Maury High School in a stock judging contest.
The area where Silas grew up lies in the heart of Appalachia, near the Smoky Mountains on the border with North Carolina. But, according to a newspaper article, in the early 1930s,
[Newspaper] “The [Whaley] family moved to Sevierville when the Great Smoky Mountains National Park acquired their farm.”
[Narrator] Not long after their move, Silas’s father died in March 1932 of pneumonia and influenza, although that same newspaper articles says the cause was homesickness for the mountains. Almost 2 years later, Silas’s mother died of tuberculosis.
The nearly back-to-back deaths were hard on 19-year-old Silas, and he soon moved away from home. His sister Lillard Molly Chance later recalled:
[Lillard] “He just couldn’t stand it around here after our momma died.”

[Narrator] Starting when he was a child, Silas had a knack for entertainment; he amazed friends and family by contorting his stomach in ways that made it look as though he had no stomach at all. Silas used his unusual talent of stomach contortion to find employment, performing around the country with travelling fairs and carnivals and billing himself as “The Man without a Stomach.”
Silas later performed this trick for his fellow POWs at the Cabanatuan POW Camp. My great-grandfather Alma Salm wrote about a soldier
[Salm] “who was on tour at one time, according to his statement, with “Believe It or Not” Ripley—as the man without a stomach. He gave us a demonstration one night. Distorting himself so the place where his stomach was normally located was just a huge indentation clear back to his backbone.”
[Narrator] The way that Salm writes about this soldier has always led me to believe that Silas’s fellow POWs didn’t necessarily believe he’d been on tour with Ripley’s Believe It or Not. So, when I started researching Silas’s history, I was skeptical that he was actually part of a side show act, even more skeptical that I’d find anything.
It’s a good thing I don’t mind being wrong, because I found a couple images of Silas doing this trick. One is an advertisement for his trick, stating at the bottom “Believe-It-Or-Not.” I’m not certain if this was for the actual Ripley’s Believe It or Not. You can check it out for yourself, just click the link in the show description. It definitely was along the lines of most early 1900s sideshow-tricks showing off “freaks” and their medical abnormalities.
Well, after a while it seems he was ready for something different and in February 1941, 26-year-old Silas enlisted in the Coast Artillery Corps at Fort MacArthur in California. The 6’, 165-pound young man had a light complexion, brown hair, and brown eyes.
5 days after enlisting, he wrote to his sister:
[Silas] “Surprised to hear that I am in the army? I didn’t wait for the draft, but enlisted for three years. I am leaving for the Philippine Islands. … Maybe I will get to see some action over there against Japan.”
[Narrator] In November 1941, Silas wrote 2 more letters to his sister, asking about home, comparing the 100-degree Philippine weather to West Virginia’s, and describing the mounting tension that war was imminent. He wrote:
[Silas] “We are waiting for Japan to make a move, and when she does all hell will break loose.”
“We can whip the Japs in 6 months. Answer me soon and don’t worry. I’ll be O.K. Keep writing to me often.”

During the War

[Narrator] Private Silas Whaley was part of the 60th Coast Artillery – which was an anti-aircraft group. A newspaper source says he was assigned to the communications section of the 60th Coast Artillery’s Battery G, where he worked on stringing telephone lines. If that’s true, he would have been on Bataan until April 8, when he would have withdrawn with the rest of Battery G to Corregidor Island just hours before the peninsula fell to the Japanese.
However, the official March 1942 roster of the 60th Coast Artillery states that he was part of the Headquarters company, which means he was likely on Corregidor from fall 1941 through that island’s fall in May 1942.
I tend to lean toward Whaley being part of the Headquarters company, especially because that newspaper article’s title was: “Whaley was part of the infamous Bataan Death March,” which is just false. He was captured on Corregidor and wasn’t part of the march.
I spent way too much time searching for which battery he was really part of, so I could share what exactly he would have been involved with during the war. I came up empty handed. So frustrating.
But regardless of which battery he was part of, in February 1942, he wrote to his sister again. His tone, this time, at least the way I read it, seemed like forced optimism rather than the real belief in the pre-war letters:
[Silas] “I can’t say what you would like to hear, but don’t worry. Everything will be o.k. in a few months. We’ll come through with colors flying. … The news will tell you all I can.”
[Narrator] Exactly three months later, on May 6, 1942, Pvt. Silas Whaley became a Prisoner of War and was sent to Cabanatuan POW Camp #3.
Shortly before Silas’s capture, just days after Bataan fell, and when specific information about American servicemen in The Philippines was unknown, one of Silas’s sisters told the local newspaper:
[Sister] “I think it’ll be all right. He’ll come back. But I think I would rather have him dead than captured by those Japs.”
[Narrator] Sadly, she would very soon get her wish.

[Narrator] Whaley seems to have become somewhat well known at Camp #3 during the summer months of 1942 – due to his unique stomach contortion skills. They were memorable enough that Alma Salm mentioned them the memoir he wrote at least 5 years later.
Whaley also befriended a sailor named Abie Abraham. Abraham “Abie” Abraham is a fairly prominent figure in The Philippines WW2 narrative, because of the tremendous amount of work he did post-war trying to identify fallen servicemen throughout the islands. And he’ll have his very own episode in the future. He, himself, has a record in the Guiness Book of World Records – for longest tree sit at more than 120 hours. So, I guess he and Whaley have something in common outside their war service.
Whaley often reminisced with Abie about friends back home, racoon hunts, and the beautiful mountains in Sevier County, West Virginia.

[Narrator] Malaria, dysentery, and other tropical diseases ran rampant at the Cabanatuan POW Camps in summer 1942.
Alma Salm wrote:
[Alma] “Due to our unbalanced diet and lack of so many nutritional items of food our body moisture barometer was out of kilter. The desire to empty our bladder came upon us so suddenly while asleep, accompanied by a feeling of painful strain, we could hardly hold our water long enough to reach the trenches ranging from one half to one block away depending on the location of the respective barracks.
“Those afflicted with active diarrhea or dysentery would find it necessary to make as many as ten to fifteen trips a night to both the urinals and latrines not to mention the many trips made during the daytime. Those who were so infected lost a great deal of weight in a short time until they hardly had sufficient strength to stand up and make these numerous nocturnal trips. It became the habit of these cases to take a piece of shelter half or a blanket and lie all night long on the ground near the latrines. Frequently when morning arrived one of our recent comrades-in-arms so situated would be found dead.
“There wasn’t any hospitals in the real sense. Across the road were a few tiny bahays trying to pinch-hit for a medical center, but there were not facilities—just bare buildings and the patients slept on a board floor with just his blanket underneath and no covering on top of him. This was merely a segregation or restricted area for the worst cases in the hopes of reducing the rapid spread of this deadly infection under the conditions these men had to live.
“Our doctors would visit the men, and with a little personal medicine which they dispensed to the worst cases hoped to keep them alive. Due to the lack of proper diet the men gradually began to die. They did their level best, but it was almost futile. Emetine, sulpha drugs and other medicines so badly needed as specifics in the treatment of this scourge were not procurable at this time and the Japs did nothing to speak of and cared less.
“Among those so bad off was a soldier whose name was either Waley, or Whaley, and who was on tour at one time according to his statement, with “Believe It or Not” Ripley—as the man without a stomach. He gave us a demonstration one night. Distorting himself so the place where his stomach was normally located was just a huge indentation clear back to his backbone. Whaley fell victim to the dreaded dysentery and although one of our best doctors on internal diseases and parasites, Dr. Leavitt, Lieutenant, Army Medical Corps, did everything possible, the lack of proper medicines plus the poor fare reduced his strength and he passed away.”
[Narrator] Pvt. Silas Whaley died at 7:30 am on August 18, 1942, of Dysentery and Abdominal abscess. I’ve always wondered if his stomach contortion abilities made him especially vulnerable to intestinal diseases.
He was 28 years old and had been at Cabanatuan Camp #3 for about 10 weeks.
Alma Salm continued:
[Alma] “[Whaley] is buried in a single grave in Camp No. Three, Cabanatuan. Most of those laid to rest [at Camp 3] were placed in single graves with their identification sealed in a bottle at the head of the body. [However], the daily deaths at [Camp #3] were not in such great number as those occurring at Camp No. One.”
[Narrator] Yes, Cabanatuan Camp #1 was much worse, because most of the Bataan Death March survivors were located there. Death rates ran astronomically high. US Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (or DPAA) historians and researchers wrote:
[DPAA] “In June of 1942, prisoners from Camp O’Donnell began to stream into Camp #1, joining the men from Corregidor and increasing the number of prisoners to over 7,300 men. Because of the poor health of the men from O’Donnell, the death rate at Camp #1 soared. By the end of the year 2,642 had perished, compared to sixty-nine in Camp #3.”
[Narrator] Among those 2,642 Camp 1 men was a 26-year-old Private named Bud Kelder.

Arthur Herman Kelder, known to his family as “Bud,” was born on June 18, 1916, in Chicago, Illinois, to Herman and Julia Kelder. He was the second of their two children, both sons. Bud’s family had strong ties to Holland, where all four of his grandparents were born. Bud's grandfather, Herman P. Kelder, immigrated to the U.S. in 1867 and was the founder of H.P. Kelder & Co., a commission merchant firm which operated as a brokerage, buying and selling futures on the stock market for clients.
Bud graduated from Schurz High School in Chicago in June 1935. In his yearbook, he expressed a simple but profound ambition: “to live a long life.” He was active in school activities, serving as Vice President of the Engineering Club and participating in the chorus.
By 1940, 24-year-old Bud still lived in Chicago with his parents and older brother Herbert, who was a dentist with his own private practice. 5’11”, 150-pound Bud owned a fruit-dealing business. He had blue eyes, brown hair, and a light complexion.
On April 4, 1941, Bud enlisted in the military in Chicago, Illinois, joining the Medical Department associated with the Air Corps and began training at Camp Grant in Rockford, Illinois. A couple months later, he was transferred to Hamilton Field in California. In September 1941, his parents received a letter from him that was postmarked from Manila.
When war began, Pvt Kelder was stationed at Sternberg General Hospital in Manila. Capt. Lloyd Goad, whose story I told in episode 53, and Army nurse Lt. Rosemary Hogan (episode 40, about her failed escape from The Philippines) were both stationed at Sternberg as well. When the US forces withdrew to Bataan, Kelder was assigned to Bataan Hospital #2. (Episodes 25 and 38 talk about details of life at that field hospital.)
After Bataan’s fall on April 9, 1942, Kelder was part of the Bataan Death March and then endured Camp O’Donnell from Mid-April to early June, at which time he and the remaining Camp O’Donnell POWs were transferred to Cabanatuan Camp #1.

I want to take a moment to go into some details on the Bataan survivors and their movements from Bataan to Camp O’Donnell. I’ve mentioned in earlier episodes that numbers are a bit fluid when talking about Bataan and the Death March, because records of men who died in the last days of battle and on the march weren’t always kept, so it’s hard to know exact numbers.
But I did find some interesting numbers in the official Cabanatuan Camp #1 history (written during the incarceration) that I think are helpful to know. First, at its peak, Camp O’Donnell – that’s the camp where the Death March ended -- had approx. 9,200 American POWs.
By June 1, 1942, the men had been there about 6 week and a reported 1,324 men had died at the camp. (That’s 14% of O’Donnell’s American POWs dying in just 6 weeks.) 3,000 American POWs had been transferred from O’Donnell to out-of-camp details in other parts of Luzon, which is The Philippines largest island.
3,800 American Camp O’Donnell POWs (all Death March survivors) were transported to Cabanatuan Camp #1 in two separate groups on the nights of June 1-2 and June 3-4. (The remaining 1,000 of O’Donnell’s original 9,200 POWs, were hospital patients too sick to move and remained at O’Donnell.)
When the Bataan/O’Donnell POWs arrived at Cabanatuan Camp 1, the POWs captured on Corregidor in early May 1942, were already there. They were moved from the Manila area between May 26-31. 6,000 Corregidor POWs (including Silas Whaley) were sent to Cabanatuan Camp #3. The remaining 3,500 Corregidor POWs were split between Cabanatuan Camps #1 and #2, although Camp 2 closed within days due to poor water availability, and those men transferred to Camp #1.
Thus, when the 3,800 Bataan/O’Donnell POWs arrived, Camp #1 population swelled to more than 7,300 men.
In an earlier Left Behind episode, I said that some of the Bataan/O’Donnell men came to Camp #3. I found several conflicting sources when I wrote that episode, but since then I’ve located a couple more official sources that suggest no Bataan/O’Donnell POWs were at Camp #3. Just want to be 100% clear on that. It is possible, however, that too-sick-to-march patients from the Bataan field hospitals were transferred to Camp #3 before the Corregidor POWs arrived.

The Bataan/O’Donnell men, who had endured the unbearable Bataan Death March and the disease-rampant horrors of Camp O’Donnell, came into Camp #1 already sick, weak, and starving – with little left to fight off diseases. And, of course, they brought with them those disease so that, according to the DPAA,
[DPAA] “By the middle of June 1942, the camp was divided . . . into three groups and a hospital area, though as one doctor imprisoned there noted, ‘the hospital served only to segregate the very ill from the less ill.’”
[Narrator] A colonel imprisoned at Cabanatuan later wrote:
[Alexander] “The Cabanatuan “hospital” was first opened in June 1942 under the command of Col. James Gillespie. At the hospital there were 30 wards (made to hold 40 soldiers each), often holding up to 100 patients. In each ward were upper and lower decks made of bamboo slats. Each patient was allotted a two-by–six-foot space. The seriously ill were kept on the lower deck.
“Fenced off from the hospital was a quarantined area containing about ten wards, called the dysentery section. Within the dysentery section was a building missed when the wards were numbered. Later, it was called the “zero” ward, due to the fact that a prisoner had “zero” chance of leaving it alive, serving as a place to put seriously ill or dying patients.”
[Narrator] I believe this is a description of the Camp #1 hospital, although people aren’t often clear about which Cabanatuan camp they’re speaking of. However, due to the size of the hospital described by the colonel, this would fit better with the structure of Camp #1.
Historian Hampton Sides, in his book Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II’s Greatest Rescue Mission, wrote:
[Sides] “In the hospital for the critically ill, known as the Zero Ward, doctors labored with improvised equipment and conducted operations with nothing more than what was termed vocal anesthetic (“It won’t hurt much”). They constantly experimented and guessed their way through procedures. They concocted dysentery palliatives from guava leaves, cornstarch, and charcoal made from charred coconut shells. They cleaned wounds with maggots.”
[Narrator] Another Army physician and POW at Cabanatuan described:
[Bumgarner] “I could have easily predicted the rise of the death rate in view of the deficient diet and the lack of medication. For the first week or ten days at Cabanatuan there were about ten deaths per day. By the middle of June the grisly procession of dead had grown alarmingly to average 20 deaths per day - 20 men who had endured the terrible ordeal of Bataan, who were 10,000 miles from home, and who then died in the most miserable circumstances. For me, as a doctor, the most distressing thought was that they could have been saved, almost without exception, by proper diet and medical care.”
[Narrator] While the summer months of 1942 were characterized by ravaging diseases, the crisis began to ebb in the fall as dysentery and malaria were brought under control. At that point, however, odd illnesses began to emerge. Illnesses the doctors hadn’t seen before. One doctor wrote:
[Hibbs] “The whole place was a pathological museum. Most doctors would never see such cases in their entire life.”
[Narrator] And that is because the Cabanatuan doctors were seeing the effects of long-term vitamin and mineral depletion. Historian Hampton Sides wrote that they were seeing, firsthand, that
[Sides] “starvation had worked its way down to the biochemical substratum, down to the level of enzymes and amino acids, down into the cells of the brain. … The doctors entertained such questions: What organs are the first to play out when a certain mineral is withheld? At what point during the process of nutritional strangulation does the body, and even the personality, begin to disintegrate and fray? …
“People lost their voices. People lost their hair. They lost eyes, they lost hearing, they lost the signal of their peripheral nerves. Their teeth fell out. Their skin fell off. They developed strange ringing in their ears. Rank metallic tastes soured the backs of their tongues. Their fingernails grew brittle and developed strange textured bands that, like growth rings on trees, reflected times of relative plenty or abject dearth.
“Scurvy, pellagra, rickets—these were the ordinary ailments, and they were all experienced early on.”

Pvt. Bud Kelder was among the fall 1942 wave of starvation illnesses. He was admitted to the Cabanatuan Camp #1 hospital in November 1942 with Pellagra, which is a disease caused by lack of vitamin B3. Symptoms include rashes, diarrhea, dementia, hair loss, swelling, and more.
The 26-year-old died on November 19, 1942, and was buried in Cabanatuan Camp #1 cemetery, mass grave 717 with 13 other men who died that day.
And this is where Bud Kelder’s real story begins. But before we jump into that, let’s take a quick trip back to the Cabanatuan Camp #3 cemetery where Pvt. Silas Whaley was buried.

After the War & Legacy
[Narrator] The cemetery at Cabanatuan Camp #3 consisted of organized, individual graves (with a few exceptions, including the 4 executed men whose story I shared in episode #57). Alma Salm stated:
[Alma] “Most of those laid to rest [at Camp 3] were placed in single graves with their identification sealed in a bottle at the head of the body.”
[Narrator] That identification included a small paper “Report of Death” that documented the man’s name, death date and place, serial number, cause of death, and some notes.
Pvt. Silas Whaley was buried in the camp cemetery’s grave #50, which was marked with his name on a hand-drawn cemetery map.
In June 1943, nearly a year after Pvt. Silas Whaley’s death, official word of his passing reached his family in West Virginia. A year later, his sister Lillard Molly Chance received a letter from President Roosevelt:
[Letter] “In grateful memory of Private Silas J. Whaley, who died in the service of his country in the Southwest Pacific area. He stands in the unbroken line of patriots who dare to die, that freedom might live.”
[Narrator] After the war, when Abie Abraham was searching for the remains of fallen POWs, he used the Camp #3 map to easily find Whaley’s grave marked by a bottle with Whaley’s death report inside. The note in that report reads:
[Silas] “Tell Mom good-bye for me.”
[Narrator] Those were the young private’s last words. But, as you may recall, Whaley’s mother had passed away in 1933. The Report of Death, which I’ve posted on my website, clearly reads “mom.” But this may have been a mishearing or misspelling on the part of doctor or record creator. A West Virginia newspaper article explained:
[Newspaper] “Silas often called his sister Moll. Her full name was Lillard Molly, and the Whaley family believed the note was meant for her.”
[Narrator] In 1946, the military sent sister “Moll” some pictures and souvenirs, which were all that remained of Silas’s personal effects.
Pvt. Silas J Whaley was returned home and interred at the Pigeon Forge Baptist Cemetery in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, in April 1949. He rests near both of his parents in land he loved so much.
In 1971, Abie Abraham sent Silas’s sister “Moll” a copy of his war memoir, dedicating it:
[Abie] “In memory of Private Whaley who bravely fought in defense of the Philippines. Sevierville can be proud of such a brave soldier.”

[Narrator] While the Camp #3 cemetery had single, well-marked, and organized graves, the cemetery at Camp 1 was quite different. And this was due to the massive number of deaths at Camp #1 -- 2,642 vs 69 at Camp #3.
The first official burials at the Camp #1 cemetery were on June 3, 1942. That’s mere days after the Camp received its first POW residents. And you’ll recall that by mid-June, the camp was seeing 20+ deaths per day. The camp’s American medical personnel kept records of most men’s death details. If the serviceman had a dog tag, it was placed in his mouth when he was buried. Otherwise, the man’s name and death information was written on a piece of paper, which was placed in his mouth.
DPAA historians wrote:
[DPAA] “Because so many men were dying, burial parties worked every day. Each morning, the men would gather at the morgue and organize into teams to begin the march to the cemetery. The camp adopted a mass internment system, burying all that died in one day in one common grave. … The burial party would deliver the dead to the cemetery and then dig the mass grave for the next day.
“In June and July 1942, the two highest mortality months at the camp, the Japanese did not permit markers or a specific organization for the placement of the graves. …The digging of large deep graves was impossible due to the high number of daily deaths plus the weakened condition of the men on the burial details. Heavy rains with no drainage facilities also hampered digging. Many shallow graves were dug during the early period, some so shallow that it was not uncommon for the rain to reveal portions of the buried bodies.”
[Narrator] Interestingly, in August 1942, Bataan Medal of Honor recipient Capt. Willibald Bianchi became officer in charge of grave digging. I told the story of the action for which he received the Medal of Honor in episode #20.
Accurate burial records were not always kept. The Camp Graves Registration Officer, stated:
[Conn] “Due to the lack of organization, which can be attributed to many causes such as, sick and disheartened Americans, lack of materials to carry on record keeping, and a decided lack of spirit of co-operation on the part of our hosts, the records for the early days were incomplete and in some instances inaccurate.”
[Narrator] Beginning in December 1945, a Graves Registration Unit from the Army’s Quartermaster General’s Memorial Division disinterred Cabanatuan Camp #1’s cemetery. As they disinterred individuals, they marked each individual teeth on dental charts. The remains were then moved to a cemetery in Manila.
The Graves Registration personnel sent the dental charts to the Memorial Division in DC, where dental corps officers compared the charts of disinterred POWs with service records for missing individuals. In this way they were able to identify nearly 300 individuals from Camp 1 Cemetery.
But Bud Kelder was not one of those identified by dental records. He had been buried in Camp #1 cemetery grave number 717 with 13 other men who died the same day. When that grave was disinterred, 4 of the 14 were identified with dental records. The rest, including Bud Kelder, were reburied in what would become the Manila American Cemetery and all the families were told their loved ones remains were non-recoverable.
Bud Kelder’s relative John Eakin told me:
[Eakin] “The reason that they couldn't identify him was because they didn't have dental records. And they didn't have dental records because they didn't ask the family for dental records.
They only used military dental records. But of course, Bud being a young private he'd been in less than a year and he'd probably never had military dental work done They didn't have any dental records.”
[Narrator] However, dental records did exist, but the Army didn’t have them. Do you recall what Bud’s older brother’s occupation was? He was a dentist. Keep this dental discussion in mind, we’ll come back to it later.
In the meantime, though, I need to introduce you to John Eakin, who runs a website called BataanMissing.com. He becomes quite important in Bud’s story from this point out. Here’s John:
[Eakin] “In about 2009, I was looking for a project and it was almost veterans day and I thought, let's see if I can find a project with a military connection because in my family my dad and my uncles and everyone in town served in the military during World War Two and there was only one member of my family that didn't come back and that was Bud Kelder. And I really didn't know much about Bud or about his life. I thought it would be the logical subject for my research.
“The only thing that I knew about him was that when I was about 15, I accompanied my grandfather to visit his sister, my great aunt. And while I was there, I was looking at the pictures on her wall and I asked about the little boy. And she just choked up and couldn’t talk and my grandfather said, ‘That's Bud.’
“So, I didn't ask anymore. And when I got home, I asked my mother, ‘Who's Bud Kelder?’ And she told me the story about the Bataan Death March and how Bud had never come home. And it had always been a terrible family tragedy because they didn't know what had happened to him.
“He just disappeared during the Bataan Death March. That's all I knew. So, I started researching him. I got his individual deceased personnel file, IDPF, and it was so obvious what happened to him. He had died in a POW camp, and the military had totally botched identifying his remains, and so they just buried him as an unknown.
“The military didn't tell the family more than he's missing in action. They told the family that his remains were nonrecoverable. And everyone thought, well, that meant that they didn't have any remains to return.
“It turned out that they did have remains to return. They just couldn't sort out exactly which were his remains, and so they buried them all as unknowns.”
[Narrator] The Individual Deceased Personnel File that John mentioned is a file created for every serviceman or woman killed during WW2. It documents the Quartermaster General’s Memorial Division’s work to identify individuals killed in action, potential remains for deceased individuals, letters from witnesses who observed the death or burial, notes from family members, and much more. I use IDPFs whenever I research a deceased American soldier for Left Behind episodes. They’re invaluable.
When John Eakin read through Bud’s IDPF, he realized there were 10 unidentified remains who could be Bud but who were buried as unknowns in the Manila American Cemetery. So he tried to get access to files that described these unknown remains. Unknown remains were given an identification number and had a file describing the condition of the remains, including dental information.
Which brings us to a point John has made to me many times – the Army’s definition of “nonrecoverable” wasn’t the same definition as the family’s. When the Kelder family was told that Bud was “nonrecoverable,” the family was left to assume and imagine all sorts of things. Perhaps Bud died by the side of the road and his body disappeared forever.
And, of course, sometimes that is what “nonrecoverable” means. For example, servicemen who died on transport ships to Japan were often buried at sea. Their bodies truly were nonrecoverable.
But other times, such as with Bud Kelder, there were potential remains that could have been Bud’s. But the family didn’t know that until John Eakin started asking the Department of Defense for those remains’ records, under the Freedom of Information Act. The DOD refused, and eventually the Kelder family sued the DOD in Federal Court.
The result: not only did the Kelders get the records for the 10 unidentified remains that could be Bud’s, but also, eventually, records of ALL other unidentified WW2 remains. That was back in 2012.
As a reminder, the main reason Bud and the men buried with him were unidentified is because the Army didn’t have dental work to compare the remains with. However, as John Eakin continued his research into Bud Kelder, he realized that Bud’s dentist brother had dental records for Bud.
And those records indicated that Bud had distinctive gold inlays in his teeth. Only one of the unidentified remains from grave 717 had gold dental work. That set of remains (labeled X-816) seemed to obviously be Bud Kelder, the matching even exceeding the standard used by the military at war’s end to identify remains.
[Narrator] Armed with this information, John Eakin tried to have those remains officially identified as Bud.
[Eakin] “At a family briefing meeting that I attended, I tried to give them the records, and they wouldn't take them.
“They looked at me like I was from Mars. You want to do what? You want to identify an unknown? This had never been done before. …
“So, in about, 2012 or 13, I filed another federal lawsuit, and asked the court to order them to produce the remains so that we could test them. And ultimately, after we got through all of the preliminary objections to the lawsuit, the court did order them to produce the remains, and they had 30 days to produce them.
“Within two weeks, they had disinterred the remains from the American Cemetery in Manila and moved them to Hawaii and tried to get the lawsuit dismissed. No way were they going to give us access to these remains. It took them about six months to identify the remains. Within early 2015, the remains of Bud Kelder and several of the other Unknowns who were buried in the same communal grave were identified and returned to the families.”
[Narrator] 73 years after his death, Bud Kelder could finally come home. However, there was a hitch.
[Eakin] “The problem was that they only returned a few token bones. They don't have sufficient DNA laboratory capacity nor the laboratory capability to properly identify all the remains. So, they just give the family a few token bones and tell them that's all they get. That's it. And sorry about that.
“They intentionally use the wrong kind of DNA without getting too technical about it. There are different kinds of DNA identification. They use mitochondrial or MT DNA. Mitochondrial DNA, just in general is slow. It's time consuming to do the testing. It's expensive to do the testing. And most importantly, mitochondrial DNA is not unique to an individual. In some ethnic groups, you might find as much as 7 percent of the population that share the same mitochondrial DNA.”
[Narrator] I recently spoke with a DPAA researcher, who told me they are now using several methods, including testing multiple types of DNA, when trying to identify unknown remains. Sounds like they have changed/updated some methodology in the last decade, and during that time, the various types of DNA testing have advanced and become more cost-efficient.
In fact, mtDNA (which is DNA found in the mitochondria of a cell) is the least effective means of DNA identification.
For example, you got your mtDNA from your mother, who got it from her mother, who got it from her mother and so on down that daughter to mother line eons back in time. You also have identical mtDNA as all of your biological siblings. Men have mtDNA, but don’t pass it on to their children (that’s because the mitochondria in a sperm cell is located in the tail, which is not absorbed in the egg at fertilization. Thus only mitochondria from the mother is passed to that child. There’s you’re unasked for human reproduction lesson for the day. You’re welcome.)
Anyway, because mtDNA does not mutate/change over time, many seemingly unrelated people share the same mtDNA. Thus, mtDNA is most useful for identifying people as belonging to larger ethnic groups rather than pinpointing specific individuals or families.
Autosomal DNA, however, is individual and unique to you. It’s a mix of DNA you inherited from your biological mother and father. This is the kind of DNA in court cases when they say there’s a 1 in 15 billion chance that the DNA could belong to another person besides the defendant. No one can say that about mtDNA results.
But autosomal DNA deteriorates much faster than mtDNA. So, when identifying older remains, sometimes autosomal DNA isn’t an option. This is just to give you a quick and definitely not inclusive overview of a couple types of DNA testing.

In August 2015, Bud Kelder’s remains – consisting of his skull and three long bones – were flown back to the United States on a US Air Force C17 aircraft and interred next to the graves of his parents.
[Eakin] “As a Vietnam veteran, I don't know how many times I heard other guys, and I certainly felt this way, if we died, that wasn't a big deal. We were young, stupid, and bulletproof. But don't bury me in this red dirt over here. We all wanted to go home. One way or another.
“To us, Vietnam was the worst place that we could be. And we didn't want to be there for all eternity. I think that most GIs feel that way. Everyone deserves, if nothing else, they deserve to have their own name on their headstone.”
[Narrator] And that is exactly what happened – even if after many decades – for both Bud Kelder and Silas Whaley. Both of these men returned home to be buried for eternity in the soil where they called home.
Sadly, though, 1,000s of American servicemen and women – including too many, still, from the Cabanatuan POW camps -- have not yet had that opportunity. And I hope and pray that some day they will all be able to have their own name on a headstone.

Outro
Thanks for listening! You can find pictures, maps, and sources about Silas Whaley’s and Bud Kelder’s stories on the Left Behind Facebook page and website and on Instagram @leftbehindpodcast. The links are in the show description. For more details and information on the search of Bud Kelder see Left Behind episode 19 as well as BataanMissing.com.
If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe so you’ll know when I drop a new episode and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts.
Left Behind is researched, written, and produced by me, Anastasia Harman.
- Voice overs by: Paul Sutherland and Tyler Harman
- Special thanks to: John Eakin for sharing his work to bring Bud Kelder home and for providing Silas Whaley’s IDPF.

SOURCES
BUD KELDER
Arthur H Kelder entry, “U.S., World War II Prisoners of the Japanese, 1941-1945,” database online: Ancestry.com, Provo, Utah, 2010, original data: National Archives and Records Administration, World War II Prisoners of the Japanese File, 2007 Update, 1941-1945. ARC ID: 212383, World War II Prisoners of the Japanese Data Files, 4/2005 - 10/2007, ARC ID: 731002, Records of the Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, Collection ADBC, ARC: 718969, National Archives at College Park. College Park, Maryland, accessed 10 May 2024.
Arthur H Kelder entry, “U.S., World War II American and Allied Prisoners of War, 1941-1946,” database online: Ancestry.com, Provo, UT, 2005, original data: World War II Prisoners of War Data File [Archival Database], Records of World War II Prisoners of War, 1942-1947, Records of the Office of the Provost Marshal General, Record Group 389, National Archives at College Park, College Park, Md., accessed 10 May 2024.
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Arthur Herman Kelder entry, Chicago, Illinois, “US, World War II Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947,” database online: Ancestry.com, Provo, Utah, 2011, original data: First Registration Draft Cards, 1940-1945 (Washington), 198 boxes, NAI: 2838690, Records of the Selective Service System, 1926–1975, Record Group 147, National Archives and Records Administration, St Louis, Missouri, accessed 10 May 2024.
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Arthur H Kelder entry, “US, World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946,” database online: Ancestry.com, Provo, Utah, 2005, original data: National Archives and Records Administration, Electronic Army Serial Number Merged File, 1938-1946 [Archival Database], ARC: 1263923, “World War II Army Enlistment Records,” Records of the National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 64, National Archives at College Park, College Park, Maryland, accessed 10 May 2024.
Arthur H Kelder entry, November 1942, “U.S., World War II Hospital Admission Card Files, 1942-1954,” database online: Lehi, Utah: Ancestry.com, 2019, original data: Hospital Admission Card Files, ca. 1970 - ca. 1970, NAID: 570973, Records of the Office of the Surgeon General (Army), 1775 – 1994, Record Group 12, The National Archives at College Park, MD, accessed 10 May 2024.
Arthur HKelder [sic] entry, “U.S., World War II Military Personnel Missing In Action or Lost At Sea, 1941-1946,” database online: Ancestry.com, Provo, Utah, 2007, original data: Department of Defense, Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office, http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/WWII_MIA/MIA_MAIN.HTM, July 2007, accessed 10 May 2024
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Hampton Sides, Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II’s Greatest Rescue Mission (New York: Anchor Books, 2002), p. 151.
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“Japanese Prisoner,” newspaper clipping found online at PVT Arthur Herman “Bud” Kelder (1916-1942) - Find a Grave Memorial, accessed 13 May 2024.
John Eakin, “Private Arthur H. “Bud” Kelder, First Unknown Returned to His Family,” BataanMissing – A Resource for Families of All US MIA's, accessed 30 May 2024.

SILAS WHALEY
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Alma Salm, “Luzon Holiday,” typewritten manuscript, pages 49-50, in possession of Anastasia M. Harman.
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Carroll McMahan, “Whaley Was Part of Infamous Bataan Death March,” The Mountain Press, 9 April 2012, transcription online at Silas J. Whaley b. 1 Jun 1914 Tennessee d. 21 May 1943 Phillipines: Smoky Mountain Ancestral Quest (smokykin.com), accessed 8 May 2024.
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Whaley, Pvt. Silas J., obituary, Apr 24, 1949, page 16 - The Knoxville Journal at Newspapers.com, accessed 7 May 2024.
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