Missing WWII Medal of Honor Recipient Returns Home for Burial 80 Years Later

The remains of Army Capt. Willibald C. Bianchi, a World War II Medal of Honor recipient killed as a prisoner of war in January 1945, arrived in his hometown of New Ulm, Minnesota, on April 24 after more than 80 years.

Hundreds of residents lined Minnesota Street that evening as a convoy of law enforcement, National Guard soldiers and veterans groups escorted Bianchi's casket from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport through several southern Minnesota towns, the New Ulm Journal reported.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency positively identified Bianchi's remains on Aug. 11, 2025, using DNA analysis, anthropological examination and circumstantial evidence. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also announced the identification on National POW/MIA Recognition Day. The findings were part of DPAA's Enoura Maru Project. 

Bianchi will receive a graveside service with full military honors on May 2 at the New Ulm City Cemetery, according to his obituary.

From a Minnesota Farm to the Philippine Scouts

Bianchi was born March 12, 1915, in New Ulm, the only son of five children to parents Joseph and Caroline Bianchi. The family raised poultry and dairy cattle on 73 acres outside of town, and Bianchi spent his childhood working alongside his father.

A farming accident killed his father before Bianchi could finish high school. The teenager left school to keep the operation running and provide for his mother and four sisters. He later finished his education at the University of Minnesota Farm School in St. Paul.

Bianchi went on to South Dakota State University for agriculture, where he also played football and joined ROTC. He took on janitorial and furnace work to cover tuition. Classmates nicknamed him "Medals" because he frequently wore his ROTC uniform. 

Sen. Amy Klobuchar said during a Minnesota Veterans Day ceremony in November 2025 that it was partly because he could not afford other clothing, but also because he was proud.

Bianchi graduated in June 1940 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. He requested foreign service immediately. In April 1941, the Army assigned him to the 45th Infantry Regiment, Philippine Scouts.

His unit was among the first American forces to see combat in the Pacific when Japan attacked the Philippines in December of 1941, shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Valor, Captivity and a Tragic Death

On Feb. 3, 1942, near Bagac on the Bataan Peninsula, then-1st Lt. Bianchi volunteered to join an assault against two Japanese machine gun nests, leading part of the attacking force. Two bullets tore through his left hand, but he refused medical treatment, dropped his rifle and switched to a pistol, according to his Medal of Honor citation.

He destroyed one machine gun position with grenades. Two more rounds struck him in the chest, but Bianchi pulled himself onto an American tank and grabbed its anti-aircraft gun, pouring fire into the remaining enemy nest until another round sent him tumbling off.

He recovered after a month and returned to duty as a captain. On April 9, 1942, Bianchi was among roughly 75,000 American and Filipino troops who surrendered to the Japanese. He survived the 65-mile Bataan Death March and spent more than two years as a prisoner of war, during which fellow prisoners credited him with saving lives by bartering for food and encouraging men to keep moving.

In December 1944, Japanese forces packed 1,619 Allied POWs, Bianchi among them, into the holds of the Oryoku Maru at Manila Harbor. The ship was one of the unmarked Japanese merchant vessels used to haul prisoners to forced labor across the empire.

On Dec. 14, U.S. Navy aircraft from the carrier USS Hornet attacked the Oryoku Maru in Subic Bay, not knowing POWs were aboard. The ship sank the following day. 

DPAA estimates more than 250 unaccounted-for Americans still lie in the wreck. Earlier this year, a 15-person dive team aboard the salvage vessel USNS Salvor began pulling artifacts from the ship 90 feet below the surface in what DPAA Director Kelly McKeague has called the agency's most complex underwater mission in its history.

Bianchi survived that sinking but was transferred to the Enoura Maru. On Jan. 9, 1945, aircraft struck that ship while it was anchored in Takao Harbor off Formosa, now Taiwan. Bianchi was among hundreds of POWs killed in the attack. He was only 29.

His mother received the Medal of Honor on his behalf on June 7, 1945, during a ceremony at Fort Snelling, Minnesota.

A Promise Kept After Eight Decades

After the war, recovery teams exhumed 311 sets of remains from a communal burial on a beach near Takao but could not determine who any of them were. The remains were buried as unknowns at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

Between October 2022 and July 2023, DPAA disinterred 70 caskets from that cemetery and the Manila American Cemetery and transferred them to its laboratory at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska for analysis. The Enoura Maru Project is DPAA's largest laboratory effort to date, exceeding even the USS Oklahoma identification program from Pearl Harbor.

Scientists matched Bianchi's remains using DNA samples that family members had provided, including a 2018 sample from one of his sisters, CBS Minnesota reported. 

Bianchi is one of 473 service members who received the Medal of Honor for actions in World War II, according to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. He was also one of only three Philippine Scouts members to earn the award.

His niece Carolyn Marti Smith told the New Ulm Journal that the identification caught the family off guard. 

"I was not expecting it," she said. "I was born after the war. When my grandmother accepted his Medal of Honor, my mom was pregnant with me."

Bianchi's Medal of Honor and other decorations are on display at the Brown County Historical Society Museum in New Ulm. The city named Bianchi Drive in his honor in 1955, while the local American Legion post bears his name. A bronze rosette will be placed next to his name on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery, according to DPAA.

"I'd like the next generation to pay attention to what we lose in wars," Smith told KSTP. "Uncle Bill was a loss to the world."