NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — A World War II hero will be returning to the Berkshires on Friday night, 82 years after he died as a prisoner of war in the Philippines.

 

Pvt. First Class Bernard Calvi's body will arrive from Hawaii on Friday and will be taken to Paciorek Funeral Home in Adams that evening. 

 

A welcome home standout will take place on Hoosac Street in Adams beginning at 8 p.m. Calvi is set to arrive at Bradley International Airport in Connecticut at approximately 6:40 p.m. and arrive at Paciorek Funeral Home about 8:20. 

 

Calvi had enlisted in the Army Air Forces in September 1940. He and William P. Gilman Jr. of North Adams, good friends and classmates, had been stationed in the Philippines with the 17th Pursuit Squadron five weeks before Imperial Japan launched its attack against United States and Allied installations across the South Pacific. 

 

They disappeared after the fall of Corregidor, an island in Manila Bay to which U.S. forces had retreated, in May 1942. Calvi's parents, Lena and Joseph of Quincy Street, were informed in 1945 that their son had died July 16, 1942, at Cabanatuan Prison Camp after surviving the Bataan Death March. Gilman died a month later.

 

Some 2,800 prisoners died in the camp after suffering from starvation, disease and dysentery. They were buried in makeshift communal graves, which made identifying and recovering remains after the war difficult, according to the Department of Defense's POW/MIA Accounting Agency. 

 

DPAA is tasked with recovering American service members missing in action and had played a key role in the recovery of Pvt. First Class Erwin S. King of Clarksburg from Guadalcanal. King was buried at Southview Cemetery on Sept. 24. 

 

Calvi was 23 when he died. Like King, his immediately family had passed away but this nieces and nephews and cousins had continued efforts to find him and bring him home. 

 

A funeral Mass will be celebrated at St. Elizabeth of Hungary Church on Tuesday, Dec. 10, and burial with military honors will follow in the family lot in Southview Cemetery. 

 

A calling hour will be held at the church on Tuesday beginning at 10:30 a.m.