The remains of an Iowa sailor who died in a Japanese prison camp more than 80 years ago will be buried in Sioux City Saturday.
Fireman first class Robert Shove was born in Cherokee in 1922 and lived most of his life in Sioux City before joining the Navy in 1940. Shove’s nephew Michael O’Brien says his uncle was captured in Corrigador as he and his shipmates from the U.S.S. Canopus fought the Japanese. He was then sent on the “Bataan Death March” to a prison in the Philippine Islands.
“He survived, but then he only lasted 18 months at the prison. He died of disease and malnutrition,” O’Brien says. O’Brien says the family knew Shove had died in 1943, but he was buried in a mass grave with others who died at the prison and efforts to identify the remains after the war couldn’t make a positive ID…