Francis B. Wai was a distinguished athlete at UCLA who played with football greats Kenny Washington and Woody Strode and famed baseball player Jackie Robinson. He was killed at age 27. Fred Koebig was UCLA Student Body president, a star football player and a member of JV Crew. He was killed at age 26. Born on Christmas Day to famed comedian Joe E. Brown, Don E. Brown was UCLA Student Body president, a guard on the basketball team and a member of the Pershing Rifles. He was killed at age 25. All were part of the approximately 275 UCLA students, faculty and alumni who lost their lives in service during World War II.

Since 2009, William L. Beigel ’80, M.A. ’83 has been researching and documenting the legacy of UCLA’s war dead, commemorating their lives and contributions to the war effort. Beigel estimates that UCLA lost more people during the War than any university besides Harvard and cites the diversity of those lost as a reflection of the university’s student body. Many of the Bruins lost in the War were Jewish or Asian-American—including Wai, who was essential in recapturing San Pedro Beach for which he received a Medal of Honor conferred during Bill Clinton’s presidential administration. UCLA is also the only university to have women included among its war dead, three of whom flew with the Women Airforce Service Pilots or WASP organization.

Beigel has spent years assiduously researching service members who died during World War II, documenting not only their service but their final moments in as much detail as possible. This work began when Beigel’s father mentioned having a cousin who had been shot down over Germany around 1943 but said he had no further information about the incident. Beigel used the research skills he had developed as a history major at UCLA to learn more about his father’s cousin and was so fascinated by what he unearthed that he continued researching war deaths. He frequently works for families looking for any information that they can find about their relatives who died so many years ago under such chaotic circumstances.

In the fog of war and tumult of battle, documenting anything can be at most an afterthought and frequently impossible, so many people are left like Beigel’s father was, with a few simple facts about the death of a loved one. For each death, Beigel relies on difficult-to-attain military documentation that can be up to 200 pages long, as well as interviews with surviving eyewitnesses and other accounts such as the posthumous commendation that Wai received.

Some information remains even more elusive—like the death of Kemper Campbell, a UCLA alumnus whom Beigel came across in a yearbook. Campbell was killed in Colorado Springs when he flew into a mountain trying to impress his sister after graduating from flight school. Beigel was only able to attain documentation of Campbell’s death, which included a statement from his sister, after finding a newspaper article that included the date and location of the plane crash.

Beigel will be sharing stories of fallen Bruins like this on the eve of UCLA’s Veterans’ Day Cermeony in an event called, “Remembering the Fallen: Bruins Who Gave Their All in World War II.” The event will begin at 6 p.m. on Nov. 9 and be held at James West Alumni Center, Collins Conference Room. If you are interested in attending, please RSVP by Nov. 3. Beigel has also been sharing his research online at ww2research.com and has created a timeline of Bruins lost in World War II, though he says his work is not over. In fact, he reports having just found the names of four Bruins not previously included in his list whom he plans to research.