After 81 years, a Chicago-area soldier who died during World War II can be laid to rest in his home state.
Military scientists have officially identified the remains of Harry Jerele of west suburban Berkeley, who died of pneumonia at age 26 in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in the Philippines. He was accounted for last December, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced Thursday.
Jerele’s niece Rosemarie Dillon, 88, who lives in Batavia, is his oldest surviving relative. She was “shocked” to learn his remains had been identified.
“It’s just an honor for me to be the one to lead this group of his relatives to the burial time,” Dillon said.
Jerele served with the 192nd Tank Battalion, which was deployed to the Philippines before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, precipitating the United States’ entry into World War II.
“They were poorly equipped and severely outnumbered, but they still fought on until April,” said Lt. Col. Brad Leighton, of the Illinois National Guard. “This history is truly amazing.”
Jerele survived the Bataan Death March, when about 75,000 captured Filipino and American troops were forced to march 65 miles to prison camps.
He died Dec. 28, 1942, and, like most prisoners who died, was buried at the camp in a common grave. It was difficult for the American Graves Registration Service to successfully identify the remains back in the 1940s, said Sean Everette, spokesperson for Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
Jerele’s remains were disinterred in early 2020, and it took a few years for Jerele to be identified.
Historians and analysts go over records to correlate “who might be buried in what kind of grave, who might be unknown,” Everette said. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency partnered with the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, which conducted the DNA analysis for Jerele’s remains.
“It’s like a giant puzzle that they try to put together,” Everette said.
The family was briefed on the identification Tuesday, before the official announcement, Everette said.
“If it wasn’t for DNA now, I don’t see how anybody could identify the remains,” Dillon said. “After all these years, to be able to do that, it’s just amazing to me.”
Of the 74,000 Americans still unaccounted for from World War II, about 38,000 are believed to be recoverable, Everette said. Others could have been on a ship that sunk or plane that crashed, he said.
Back in the United States, Jerele and other soldiers in the Philippines were not forgotten during and after the war.
In 1942, their mothers started the Maywood Bataan Day to commemorate them, and the community has continued to observe it every September, on the second Sunday of the month, since then, Leighton said.
“He was a member of a community that has not forgotten their service or sacrifice, even now that the veterans of the battalion are now passed,” Leighton said.
The parade has always a “big thing,” Dillon said, and “jam-packed with people and flags.”
“They were looking for someone to represent and be in the parade for the Bataan Day queen. My grandmother sent in my picture, and I was a runner-up,” Dillon said.
Jerele will be buried Oct. 4 at the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, Dillon said. He will receive 10 medals, including ones of high honor.
“It will be closure when I see the casket going in the grave. We know he will be home where he belongs,” Dillon said.
