City eyes official marker at Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Davao's Masonic cemetery

The Davao City government, through its Office of the Culture and Arts (OCA), is planning to install a marker or monument near the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier inside the Filipino American Veterans Masonic Memorial Park, according to a PIA Davao report carried by SunStar.

OCA head Oscar Casaysay said the office is coordinating with the Masonic organization that maintains the site, which has already put up its own marker. He said he hopes another resolution can be passed as part of an ordinance so that the city can officially install one.

The tomb, at the edge of the cemetery, holds the remains of several American, Filipino and Japanese World War II dead. Once marked only by a simple white cross, it has since been improved with a larger cross, a steel marker, and concrete posts linked by steel chains to mark off the area. In 2018, American veterans living in Davao under American Legion Post 66 began the process of identifying the remains of 32 American and Filipino soldiers buried there.

Known locally as the Masonic Cemetery, the four-hectare site sits in Madapo Hills in Barangay 6-A, an area also called "wireless" after an old wireless telegraph station. It lies beside the Wireless public cemetery and the Roman Catholic cemetery, the city's two main burial grounds.

The cemetery was established in 1915 as one of two burial grounds designated by American authorities. It was first meant for American Masons but later took in American military veterans, many of whom settled in Davao in the early 1900s to run abaca and coconut plantations. Among those buried there is Colonel George Thompson, a special representative of US President Calvin Coolidge to the Philippines who helped bring investments to Davao.

The American Cemetery Association managed the grounds until the late 1950s, when Mason and American veteran Alfred W. Roberts negotiated the transfer of land rights to the Davao Masonic Association Inc.

The report notes that apart from civic structures such as the century-old City Hall, few traces of Davao's American pioneers remain. The city holds its annual Liberation of Davao commemoration at the cemetery every May 3, marking the return of American forces that ended the Japanese occupation.