Thomas Kocher MacNair was born on November 23, 1910, in Santa Clara County, California. He was a graduate of the West Point Class of 1933, who served with distinction in the Coast Artillery Corps. After early assignments at Fort Totten (NY), Panama, Fort Hancock (NJ), Fort Monroe (VA), and as an aide to Gen. W.E. Shedd, he was stationed at Corregidor, Philippines, in 1938 with the 60th Coast Artillery Regiment (Anti-Aircraft), part of the Harbor Defenses of Manila and Subic Bays.

When Corregidor fell on May 6, 1942, MacNair was captured and spent 31 months as a prisoner of war at Bilibid Prison and Cabanatuan, where conditions were horrific, with disease, starvation, and exhaustion claiming hundreds of lives each month. In December 1944, as Japan began transferring POWs for forced labor, he was among the prisoners loaded onto the Oryoku Maru, one of the infamous “hell ships.” Packed into airless holds, the men suffered from suffocation, thirst, and panic before the ship was bombed by U.S. Navy aircraft on December 14, 1944, in Subic Bay, unaware that it carried Allied POWs. MacNair was killed during the attack, and his remains were never recovered.

Maj MacNair's name is memorialized in the Tablets of the Missing in the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, Manila, Capital District, National Capital Region, Philippines. He also has a cenotaph in the Arlington National Cemetery.

Source of information: www.findagrave.com, www.fold3.com, weremember.abmc.gov