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.
“His bones were put into a cemetery on the Philippines, an official cemetery, as just a number, like the unknown soldier kind of thing, and he was given a number and they sat there all the way up until 2014. They took the bones out again and then they sent him to Hawaii where in 2019 they finally matched him up with some DNA that had been donated by his way younger brother,” he says.
The 73-year-old O’Brien says the military determined he was the closest living relative and called him to say the bones had been identified. “Oh, that was surreal. It was like, what? Who? An uncle, really, my mom’s brother?,” he says. He says his mother was one of eleven children and he had not known the entire story of his uncle. “It’s all new to me, all learning a lot of new stuff, about the science and then about the war and about the whole thing about him. And it’s like he’s brought back to life, It’s just like suddenly brought back to life for everybody and for all my siblings” O’Brien says.
O’Brien lives in Medford, Massachusetts and he and his drove to Iowa for the funeral. They were on hand in Council Bluffs Thursday for the dignified transfer of remains. He tells Radio Iowa a color guard escorted Shove’s casket from the plane. “The color guard moved back and then they allowed me and my cousin and our spouses, the four of us, to just go up and spend some time,” he says.
O’Brien says it hit him that this was his mother’s older brother. “My God, it was so emotional. my wife lost it, my cousin lost it, because he’s an old naval man too. And he had a career in the Navy and he was actually at one point did escort missions himself,” he say.
O’Brien says he also reflected on what his uncle’s sacrifice and and how long it finally took to bring him back home. “This was the last leg of his journey back home where he’s going to be buried right next to his mother and brother and sister. I didn’t expect to be that emotionally involved,” he says.
O’Brien says his brothers and sisters are all coming to Sioux City for the funeral at noon Saturday and burial with military honors at Memorial Park Cemetery. Governor Kim Reynolds has ordered all flags in Iowa to fly at half-staff from sunrise to sunset on Saturday in honor of Shove.
