6th Army Cemeteries on Luzon

Ever since I received my great uncle's Individual Deceased Personnel File (IDPF), I have been trying to track down the location of the cemeteries in which his remains were buried until they were eventually shipped home in 1948. Then, not long ago, I decided to go though and organize some PDF documents that I had collected over the last year. One of these reports was:

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As I was scanning through it, I found exactly the information I had been seeking for so long: a listing of cemeteries, temporary and semi-permanent, set up by the Army during the Luzon Campaign. Here is the page of the QM report that shows the relative locations of the cemeteries along with a brief Graves Registration summary.

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In the case of my great uncle, the IDPF said he was initially buried in Santiago No. 1 cemetery. I tried finding a town in Luzon named Santiago and discovered that there was a town named Santiago about every 10 miles. That made it a bit difficult to be sure of the location, especially since it was called "Santiago No. 1" which implies there is at least a "No. 2" as well. To make a long story short, here is a portion of a map of Central Luzon that I got from a Tank Destroyer Battalion's AAR:

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On the simple line drawn map of the cemeteries, Santiago No. 1 is located slightly east of a line drawn from Tarlac to Bamban. If you look at the Central Luzon map above, Tarlac is at the top-left and Bamban is at the bottom-left of the map. Concepcion is located to the east of the Tarlac-Bamban line and Santiago is a small town a short distance to the NW of Concepcion.

I suspect that I downloaded the full 6th Army Report from the Digital Library at CARL, but I was unable to find it again in order to post the link. However, the AAR for the 637th TD Battalion can be easily found on their unit page at tankdestroyer.net as well as in the Digital Library at CARL. If you want some decent WWII era maps of Luzon, I recommend getting the 637th TD Bn's reports.

 

The Annex No. 4 page (previous post) is a bit difficult to read, so I tried isolating elements on the page. Hopefully, this will help. The original image I am working with is not the greatest.

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I finally tracked down the Sixth Army's Luzon Campaign Reports in CARL's Digital Library. Well, most of it. I found volumes 1, 3 & 4. Here are the links:

Luzon Campaign Vol I - Part 1 of 3

Luzon Campaign Vol III - Part 1 of 2

Luzon Campaign Volume IV - Part 1 of 7

 

I was looking at my great uncle's IDPF and found that he was buried at USAF Cemetery Manila #1. One thing I did not understand fully was "Nature of Burial". In that space they had typed "Shelter Half". What do they mean by "shelter half"?

 

You've probably seen the typical "A-frame" tents. Well, each soldier was issued half of the tent. They would then buddy up and put their halves together to make one tent. If a soldier was hastily buried on the battlefield, their half of the tent would be used to cover the body.

 

Thanks Tommy for the answer! I was thinking maybe it had to do something with that but wasn't 100% sure.

 

Not a problem.