Edgewood (Iowa) Item – K. Hugh Fraser is at Fort Riley, Kan., for two weeks active duty with the 7st Engineer Reserves to which he was assigned when he received his commission as second lieutenant at the University of Iowa.
Source: Dubuque Telegraph Herald, June 19, 1940
East Iowa Army Men On Duty in Pacific
At Nichols Field
Second Lieut. Hugh Kirk Fraser, engineer reserve, of Edgewood, stationed at Nichols Field in the Philippine Islands.
Source: Cedar Rapids Gazette, Dec. 2, 1941
Edgewood Lieutenant Listed as Missing
Edgewood, IA – Mrs. Leona Fraser received word here Wednesday from the War Department that her son, Lieut. Hugh K. Fraser, is listed as missing in action in the Philippine Islands. He was with the Army Engineering Corps and had been located at Corregidor, which capitulated to the Japs recently.
Source: Dubuque Telegraph Herald, June 10, 1942
Casualty Roster Lists 2,460 Killed
The war department Tuesday made public the names of 2,460 United States soldiers killed in action in the various theaters of war. The list included the names of one Dubuque and two Dubuqueland men, all killed in the southwest Pacific area. The list included Hugh K. Fraser, son of Mrs. Leona Fraser, Edgewood, Ia.
Source: Dubuque Telegraph Herald, Sept. 19, 1944
BIO
Hugh Kirk Fraser was born June 7, 1918, in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, to Keith and Leona (Garretson) Fraser. Hugh K. Fraser was the valedictorian of the Edgewood, Iowa high school class of 1936. Hugh went to college at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa and was commissioned, a 2nd LT, upon graduation. His enlistment date was Aug. 4, 1940. By October 1941 he was a 1st LT stationed with the 803rd Engineer Aviation Battalion in the Bataan province of the Philippines.
The Japanese launched a major offensive against the Philippino-American forces on Bataan on April 3. Major General Edward P. King, the commander of the Bataan Forces, released the 803rd from their engineering duties, converted them into infantrymen, and placed them in the Philippine II Corps reserve.
Six days later General King surrendered all of Bataan to the Japanese. That day, April 9, 1942, Hugh Fraser became a Japanese prisoner of war. This date also marks the beginning of the Bataan Death March which resulted in the deaths of somewhere between 6,000-20,000 Allied soldiers and was characterized by severe physical maltreatment, lack of medical care, torture, and wanton abuse and killings, later to be judged by an Allied military commission as a Japanese war crime. Many of those responsible were executed. Two months later, June 24, 1942, Hugh Fraser died in POW Camp #1 Cabanatuan in Luzon. Prisoners were buried in mass graves. Hugh Fraser was 23 years and 17 days old, and in the words of my father, one of the brightest men he ever had the pleasure of knowing. Hugh Fraser's remains now lie in the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial.
Source: Info researched and provided by Deborah Rowell Gleason, whose dad was a personal friend of Hugh Fraser.
Hugh K. Fraser was born June 7, 1918 to Keith Colt and Leona Belle Fraser. He died June 24, 1942 and is memorialized at the Walls of the Missing, Manila American Cemetery, Taguig City, Philippines.
Lt. Fraser served with the U.S. Army Air Corps 813rd Engineer Battalion, Aviation and was MIA and became a POW. He died in Cabanatuan POW Camp in the Philippine Islands.
Source: ancestry.com
