D. Chard's Plate Recovered

Mr. and Mrs. Harry L. Chard recently came into possession of a home-made identification wrist plate that their son, Donley D. Chard was wearing after he was taken a prisoner of war by the Japanese on Wake Island in December of 1941.

The inscription on the tag read:

DONLEY D CHARD
41 WAKE ISLAND 42
PRISONER OF WAR
SS ###-07-####
EMMA H. CHARD 43
MIDWAY, UTAH

The identification plate appears to have been made from metal taken off an airplane and was uncovered during construction work on the Wake Island air field after the war.

Chard and other fellow workers were taken prisoners and later believed to have been killed.

Chard in company with John Martin, also of Pomeroy, had accepted employment with the Morrison-Knudson Co., Boise, Idaho, who had a contract to install military installations on Wake Island. They arrived on Wake in November of 1941. On December 7, 1941 the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor and attacked Wake Island. The small military force on the island at that time with the aid of the civilian forces held out for several days before surrendering to the Japanese forces. Some of the prisoners were shipped to Japan but Chard and Martin were held as prisoners on the island and were thought to have been killed with other members of the group on Oct. 7, 1943.

Chard's remains with those of other members taking part in the Wake episode are buried in a single grave in the National Memorial cemetery in the Hawaiian Islands near Honolulu.

[Note: Mr. Chard's social security number was edited out by this editor in 2017.]