Seventy-five years after Montanan William Gruber died in World War II, his body will finally return to Jefferson County August 5. Gruber was 22 when he died in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in the Philippines in 1942, a camp in which he was imprisoned after surviving the infamous Bataan Death March. He was buried in a multiple body grave in the Philippines. Family members worked in vain for decades to get him returned.
In the 1950s, efforts to identify bodies resulted in some soldiers’ families getting closure, but the Gruber family was told their loved one’s remains were not determined from among several unknown soldiers who died around the same time. When DNA came into the picture decades later, the soldier’s relatives submitted samples and hoped for news. But time passed without any progress.
Hoping to spur action, a nephew living in California sent packets of information to several news outlets in late summer 2015. No one responded for more than a month, but then the nephew, Kim Gruber, heard from Boulder Monitor editor Jan Anderson.
When Anderson apologized for taking so long to get back to him, Kim Gruber said no one else had even bothered to respond. Anderson recommended and arranged for family members to meet with a field representative of U.S. Senator Jon Tester in the Helena home of one of William Gruber’s brothers.
Three months later the senator wrote to military officials to pursue the matter, and within another three months the family got word the bodies in a common grave would be disinterred. In February, just over a year from the Monitor’s first coverage of the story, the family heard the news they had long awaited: William Gruber had been positively identified and would be coming home. From California, Kim Gruber credited Anderson’s efforts with “breaking the logjam.” The soldier’s body is due to return to Helena a few days before August 5.
On Saturday, August 5, a funeral mass will be held at St. Helena Cathedral followed by a procession escorted by an honor guard to St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in the Boulder Valley. There a graveside service will be conducted. A headstone honoring Gruber has been in place for years at the little white church in the valley.
There Gruber will find his final resting place in the plot reserved where his parents rest. Nearly all of Gruber’s brothers also served in World War II. All returned safely and the four remaining alive have awaited his return. A large contingent of family from far and wide is expected for the services in August.
