80 Years After Death, Medal of Honor Recipient Identified, Buried

More than 80 years after his death, Medal of Honor recipient Army Capt. Willibald Bianchi's remains were identified by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, and on May 2, he was buried in his hometown alongside his parents and his sisters.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth paid tribute to the U.S. military's prisoners of war and personnel missing in action during a ceremony commemorating National POW/MIA Recognition Day at the Pentagon, Sept. 19, 2025. Last year, the agency identified the remains of 231 service members, including Bianchi. His family attended the ceremony and met with Hegseth.

Bianchi was born March 12, 1915, in New Ulm, Minnesota, to Joseph and Caroline Bianchi. He had one older sister and three younger sisters, and he went by the name of Bill. The family lived on a poultry farm.

As the only boy, Bianchi was often called upon to help his dad with daily tasks. Sadly, Bianchi's father died in a farming accident when he was still in high school, so the teen had to quit school to take over the farm and support his family in his father's absence.

Eventually, however, Bianchi completed his schooling at the University of Minnesota Farm School in St. Paul. Afterward, he enrolled in South Dakota State University to major in animal science. While there, he played football and was active in ROTC. He also worked as a janitor and as a furnace mechanic to pay his way.

In June 1940, Bianchi graduated and was commissioned as an Army second lieutenant. As soon as he could, he requested to be sent overseas because he wanted to see action, according to the Minnesota Medal of Honor Memorial website.

Soon enough, he got his wish. In April 1941, Bianchi was sent to the Philippines to serve with the 45th Infantry and the Philippine Scouts - a group of native troops trained by U.S. soldiers to fight off Japanese aggression.

Unfortunately, that training didn't happen quickly enough, as the Philippine Scouts saw some of the very first action of World War II in the Pacific. On Dec. 7, 1941 - the same day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor - the enemy also bombed Clark Field, an Army air base on the island of Luzon. Soon after, the Japanese invaded, forcing Allied troops to withdraw to the Bataan Peninsula and to Corregidor Island to hold off the enemy until the U.S. Navy could bring supplies and reinforcements.

On Feb. 3, 1942, Bianchi's unit was on the western part of the peninsula when a rifle platoon of another company was ordered to wipe out two strong enemy machine gun nests. Then-1st Lt. Bianchi volunteered to go with them and lead some of the men.

When the fight kicked off, Bianchi was shot twice through the left hand, but instead of stopping for first aid, he tossed aside his rifle and began shooting with his pistol. When he came across the first machine gun nest, he quickly silenced it with grenades.

Bianchi was shot twice more in the chest, but again, instead of getting help, he climbed onto a U.S. tank and took command of its antiaircraft machine gun. He blasted the second enemy machine gun position until he was shot again and completely knocked off the tank.

Bianchi spent a month recovering from his wounds before returning to duty and being promoted to captain.

On April 9, 1942, the Philippines fell to the Japanese. Bianchi and about 75,000 other American and Filipino soldiers were captured as prisoners of war. They endured the famous Bataan Death March across 65 miles of terrain, during which they were brutally abused. Many men died on the trek, but as a leader, Bianchi moved among the marchers to lift their spirits and keep them going.

Bianchi spent time in several POW camps, each of which had horrible living conditions. At each one, Bianchi continued his role as caretaker, bartering with their captors for food for himself and other starving prisoners. "Many servicemen wrote to Bianchi's mother following the war, telling her that they owed their lives to her son," according to the Minnesota Medal of Honor Memorial website.

By December 1944, Allied troops had begun to retake the Philippines, so the Japanese started transferring all their POWs to the mainland using what survivors referred to as "hell ships" due to the extremely harsh conditions they endured on them.

Bianchi was first put on a ship called the Oryoku Maru. When it was attacked by Allied aircraft, Bianchi survived, but he was transferred to another Japanese POW ship, the Enoura Maru.

Many of these ships were unmarked, so Allied aircraft were unaware they were filled with American POWs. Sadly, Bianchi died on Jan. 9, 1945, when a U.S. Navy aircraft dropped a 1,000-pound bomb on the Enoura Maru.

Stories of Bianchi's valor eventually made it out of the Philippines. On June 7, 1945, his mother received the Medal of Honor on his behalf during a ceremony at Fort Snelling, Minnesota.

Later, famed Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur wrote to Bianchi's mother to honor her son and his fellow soldiers.

"It was largely their magnificent courage and sacrifices which stopped the enemy in the Philippines and gave us the time to arm ourselves for our return to the Philippines and the final defeat of Japan," MacArthur said.

The 29-year-old never married and had no children, but his mother and sisters kept his memory alive by donating his Medal of Honor and other decorations to the Brown County Historical Society Museum in his hometown, which displays those items for visitors.

New Ulm also named a street for Bianchi in 1955 and renamed its American Legion in his honor in 1990. At Bianchi's alma mater, SDSU, a memorial and scholarship were established in 1998. Two years later, a monument in his honor was also dedicated at the school. 

Bianchi's remains were identified in August 2025.

They were among the more than 430 casualties previously marked as unidentifiable and buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu in 1946. In 2023, they were later exhumed and transported to a DPAA laboratory in Omaha, Nebraska, where the process to identify each casualty continues. Bianchi is the 21st service member identified from that project.

Following the identification, one of his nieces told DPAA personnel that Bianchi's mother had once said, "I gave one son up for this country and would do the same if I had other ones."