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First at 7, an unexpected call from the Navy brought a First Coast family face to face with a relative they never knew existed. Thank you for joining us. I’m Jessica Clark. During World War II, the US sailor was captured, taken prisoner in the Philippines, and died in a POW camp. Well, fast forward 80 years and his few surviving relatives who live on the First Coast are notified by the Navy with a story that they have never heard.

Yeah. And this here shows a lot of information. Edward Campbell of Middleburg. I spent 23 years in the Navy. His daughter Tina has served in the US Navy, but when the Navy called him a few months ago, it was unexpected. But they sent me a DNA kit. I had to take a DNA sample. Campbell’s DNA was a match with a sailor named John Judson Campbell, who was a US Navy sailor during World War II.

Turns out this Campbell from World War II is Edward Campbell’s half-uncle. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I didn’t know anything about him. He didn’t have a relationship with his father. This is the story he’s learned. John Campbell was a chief electrician’s mate on the USS Canopus AS-9, a submarine tender in the Philippines in the early 1940s.

In December 1941, the Japanese attacked the ship. Months later, the Navy decided to scuttle the USS Canopus, sending it off into the waters for it to sink, and that was to keep the Japanese from taking advantage of it. But when they scuttled it, then all the people that were on it went ashore, including John Campbell, and that’s how he got captured, captured by the Japanese.

Forced to walk in the Bataan Death March to a camp in the Philippines where he eventually died. He died of dysentery, I think, in the POW camp, and he was buried in a grave with other remains. As it so happens, this Campbell served decades later, not too far away from where his uncle was buried. I’ve been to the Philippines so many times, you know, but I didn’t know about it at the time when I went over there and I was probably within a couple of miles of where he was buried, where the POW camp was.

For years though, this Campbell’s mother asked the Navy about him. She never gave up and she wrote letters asking, “Where’s my son?” In 1945, the American Legion sent this letter to the US government about her. This mother is 80 years old and is very desirous of having her son’s remains sent home to her so that he might rest in their family lot, but this little mother still frets and waits.

What happened next was I found out that his mother was buried, and on her tombstone, she put her name as well as her son’s. So that’s when I said, “Well, he ought to be buried with his mother, you know. I’m very proud that I was related to him. I’m sorry for what happened to him, but it was so long ago and I just didn’t know, you know.”

And so next week, Edward Campbell and his daughter are traveling to New Jersey from Florida where John Campbell will be buried next to his mother with a full military honors ceremony.