(PEXELS)
FRANKFORT – A World War II POW is finally coming home. U.S. Army Private First-Class Thomas Franklin Brooks will be laid to rest near his childhood home in Edmonson County.
Brooks died in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in the Philippine Islands in 1942 but his remains were not identified until this summer. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced Tuesday that Brooks, 23, of Mammoth Cave was accounted for on June 20th of this year.
Brooks was a member of the Company D, 194th Tank Battalion, U.S. Army Forces Far East, when Japanese forces invaded the Philippine Islands. Brooks was among those reported captured when U.S. forces in Bataan surrendered to the Japanese. They were subjected to the 65-mile Bataan Death March and then held at a POW camp. More than 2,500 POWs perished in that camp during the war.
According to prison camp and other historical records, Brooks died Dec. 10, 1942, and was buried with other deceased prisoners in the Camp Cemetery in what was known as Common Grave 917.
Following the war, American Graves Registration Service personnel exhumed and relocated the remains to a temporary U.S. military mausoleum near Manila. In 1947, the AGRS attempted to identify them. Five sets were identified, but the rest were declared unidentifiable and were buried at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial as Unknowns. In early 2018, the remains associated with Common Grave 917 were disinterred and sent to the DPAA laboratory for analysis, and scientists were able to identify Brooks’s remains.
A graveside service for Brooks will be held Sunday, October 1st at Hill Grove Missionary Baptist Cemetery on Dickey’s Mill Road in Mammoth Cave. The service is open to the public.
Governor Beshear will order flags lowered to half-staff in honor of Pfc. Thomas Franklin Brooks on that day.
