BORN on Saipan on July 17, 1912, Maria Concepcion Cabrera was transported by the U.S. Navy in the 1930s to the Philippines, where she died during World War II. Her remains were never returned to Saipan.
On Monday, Nov. 6, 2023, Associate Judge Joseph N. Camacho ordered the Registrar of Vital Statistics to prepare a death certificate marked “presumptive” and indicating that Cabrera died on April 10, 1942. The judge also ordered that other facts required to complete the death certificate “shall be based on the findings of fact” in his order.
The court issued the presumptive death of person order after Antonio B. Cabrera, the first cousin of Maria’s only son, Daniel Concepcion Cabrera, filed the petition in his capacity as administrator of the Estate of Jose Cruz Concepcion, who was Maria’s father.
Antonio B. Cabrera, in an interview on Tuesday, said he was doing it for his nephew, Maria’s grandson, Daniel Joseph C. Cabrera Jr.
According to the court order, there is a presumption that a person has died when (1) a person is absent for a continuous period during which the person has not been heard from; 2) the person’s absence is not satisfactorily explained after diligent search or inquiry; and 3) the person has been exposed to a specific peril of death.
“Each of the three-prong test, including specific peril of death, must be satisfied before an individual may properly be presumed dead,” the order stated.
Maria, whose parents were Jose Cruz Concepcion and Trinidad Sablan Concepcion, married Mariano Gumataotao Cabrera on Feb. 9, 1933, and moved to Guam where they started a family. It was in Agaña, Guam where Maria, on Jan. 15, 1937, gave birth to Daniel.
In the late 1930s, Maria was diagnosed with leprosy and was brought by the U.S. Navy to Culion Leper Colony in Palawan, the Philippines, which was then an American possession.
On Dec. 8, 1941, Guam and the Philippines were attacked and invaded by Japanese military forces.
Maria never returned to Guam or Saipan.
Sometime in 1946, the United States Navy reported to Mariano that Maria or her body could not be found.
In 1947, Mariano returned to Saipan and married Esperanza S. Camacho. On March 4, 1961, Maria’s father, Jose Cruz Concepcion, a person of Northern Marianas descent, died on Saipan.
