During World War II, U.S. Army Captain Willibald Bianchi survived two chest wounds from Japanese gunfire, the Bataan Death March, a harrowing prisoner of war life in a POW camp, and the sinking of his compatriots’ first POW transport ship.
For his bravery in combat, he was awarded the Medal of Honor, the U.S. military’s highest award for valor.
But Bianchi never learned of his award and never saw his hometown of Minnesota again.
He would not be able to survive a second attack by US fighter jets on the POW ship where he was being held. According to Japanese POWs, Bianchi died in early 1945 when the POW ship he was on was attacked by the U.S. military off the coast of Formosa Island (now Taiwan).
However, his body was never identified, and his name was added to the Manila American Cemetery’s “Wall of the Missing,” along with more than 37,000 others who “rest in unknown graves,” as the monument says.
On Wednesday, more than 80 years after Bianchi’s death, that position changed. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said Bianchi’s body was among about 300 unidentified bodies recovered in Taiwan in 1946.
After their discovery, the remains were transferred to Hawaii’s National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also known as the Punchbowl, and buried in an unmarked grave, according to an official press release.
Three years ago, those remains from Taiwan were disinterred and new tests began, and Bianchi was identified in August, authorities said, adding that the results were made public on Wednesday after Bianchi’s family was fully briefed.
The war hero will be laid to rest for the last time in May in his hometown of New Ulm, Minnesota, the agency said.
That was more than 85 years after he left the United States.
In early 1941, a few months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7 and the United States’ entry into World War II, Bianchi requested a mission to the Philippines and was assigned to the Philippine Scouts, a U.S. Army unit made up of Filipino soldiers led by U.S. military officers, according to his Medal of Honor entry.
When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, it also attacked U.S. forces in the Philippines. By February 1942, the Japanese had pushed most of the American and Filipino forces into the Bataan Peninsula, a strip of land 40 miles long and 40 miles wide that protects Manila Bay from the South China Sea.
It was here that Bianchi’s heroism was first seen, and where his actions would earn him the award of the Medal of Honor.
He commanded a Philippine reconnaissance company and volunteered to lead a platoon to destroy two Japanese machine gun nests, according to a Pentagon report.
“When the battle began, Bianchi was shot twice in the left hand, but instead of stopping for first aid, he threw away his rifle and began shooting with his pistol instead. Upon encountering the first machine gun nest, he quickly silenced it with a grenade.
“Bianchi was shot twice more in the chest, but instead of calling for help again, he climbed onto a U.S. tank and took command of an anti-aircraft machine gun. He blasted a second enemy machine gun position until he was shot again and completely blown off the tank,” the report said.
It took him a month to recover from his injuries, but he was still on the peninsula when more than 70,000 American and Filipino troops surrendered to the Japanese on April 9.
Bianchi and his men infamously marched 65 miles across the peninsula under harsh conditions to a prisoner of war camp in the north, known as the “Bataan Death March.”
According to his biography on the Minnesota Medal of Honor website, Bianchi tried to uplift spirits as much as possible as a leader despite the deaths of countless others.
After the Death March, Bianchi endured a series of POW camps, and in December 1944 he found himself on a POW ship anchored in Subic Bay, Philippines.
Americans called these ships “hell ships” because of the conditions inside them. The men were crammed into a dark, unventilated hold with no room to sit in temperatures well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius).
To make matters worse, POW ships were often unmarked, and their human cargo was anonymous.
As a result, Bianchi’s “hell ship” was attacked by American military planes whose pilots did not know their compatriots were on board.
That ship sank, but Bianchi survived, and the Japanese transferred him to another POW ship that met a similar fate off the coast of Taiwan on January 9, 1945.
“A U.S. military aircraft dropped a 1,000-pound bomb into the hold of a docked ship. The United States did not know that the target was filled with American prisoners of war. Bianchi was killed instantly,” the Minnesota Medal of Honor website states. He was 29 years old.
Just five months later, Bianchi’s mother, Carrie Bianchi, will accept the Medal of Honor on her son’s behalf at a ceremony in Minnesota.
She later wrote, “As a mother, I am proud to give this generation and our beloved America the most precious gift life can offer: my only son,” the website says.
Bianchi was one of 473 soldiers to receive the Medal of Honor for their actions during World War II. After Bianchi’s identification, the 21 bodies were declared missing.
