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Private
Bennett Hubert Waters
1917/10/17 _ Born Georgia
Son of James Lester Waters and Minnie L. Bennett Waters
Brother to James Woodrow, Jewel Eliza and Geneva,
American Air Force
17th Bombardment Squadron
27th Bombardment Group
Service
His unit arrived in the Philippines in October 1941, shortly before the Japanese attack on Clark Field and the subsequent invasion of Luzon.
Japanese PoW
1942/04/09 - Captured Philippines
He was initially held at the Cabanatuan Prisoner of War Camp, where he remained during the summer of 1942. In 1943, he was assigned to a labour detail to assist in rebuilding Nichols Airfield under harsh conditions.
In the summer of 1944, as Japanese forces began evacuating prisoners of war from the Philippines. Private Waters was among those transported aboard Japanese vessels as part of this effort.
On 14th December, unaware of the PoWs onboard, Allied aircraft attacked the first ship, the Oryoku Maru, in Subic Bay in the Philippines. Survivors of the bombing were put aboard two other ships, the Enoura Maru and the Brazil Maru, to continue on to Japan.
During the journey, while anchored in Takao Harbor, Formosa, present-day Taiwan, the Enoura Maru was attacked by Allied aircraft. The Japanese government reported that Waters died aboard the Enoura Maru on 9th January, 1945.
Following the end of the war, the American Graves Registration Command was tasked with investigating and recovering missing American personnel. In May 1946, an American Graves Registration Command Search and Recovery Team exhumed a mass grave on a beach at Takao, Formosa, recovering 311 bodies.
However, the remains could not be identified at the time and were buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu as Unknowns.
Between October 2022 and July 2023, DPAA disinterred Unknowns from the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific linked to the Enoura Maru. The remains were accessioned into the DPAA Laboratory for further study and scientific analysis. The laboratory analysis and the total circumstantial evidence available identified one set of the remains as those of Bennett Hubert Waters.
He is memorialised on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial in the Philippines.
Bennett is now buried at Blackshear Ciry Cemetery, Blackshear, Pierce County, Georgia, USA.
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