TDIH: WWII Hero Willibald Bianchi

He showed “magnificent courage," General Douglas MacArthur wrote.

On this day in 1945, a Medal of Honor recipient is killed while being held as a prisoner of war. The Japanese had been holding Willibald “Bill” Bianchi in captivity for nearly three years.

Bianchi had been among those fighting in the Philippines early in World War II.

The Minnesota-born soldier was a long way from home: He’d grown up on a poultry farm, eventually enrolling at South Dakota State University where he majored in animal science. It was Army ROTC that ultimately called, though. When he graduated in 1940, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Army.

Bianchi’s Medal action came on February 3, 1942, in the Philippines. Then-First Lt. Bianchi had volunteered to help lead another platoon that day as it worked to take out two enemy machine-gun nests. Bianchi was soon wounded in one hand, which made it hard for him to use a rifle. Undeterred, he threw down the rifle, picked up a pistol and some grenades, and kept going: He would personally destroy one machine gun nest with those grenades.

At about that time, he was wounded a second time “by two machine-gun bullets through the chest muscles,” as his Medal citation describes. Apparently unphased, Bianchi climbed atop a nearby American tank, exposing himself as he manned its antiaircraft machine gun.

His attack ended when he was knocked off the tank, wounded and unconscious. He’d done enough, though. His persistence had weakened the Japanese, and his fellow soldiers were able to finish what he’d started. A war correspondent soon reported that they’d “frustrated what was to have been the start of a major Japanese drive.”

Bianchi was promoted to Captain, but he was also out of commission for a month while he healed. His family would later speak of Bianchi’s determination to get back into action.

“He was strong and courageous,” his uncle smiled. “When he made up his mind to do something, he followed through!”

Unfortunately, Bianchi returned to duty just in time to get captured. He was among those forced on the infamous Bataan Death March on April 9.

For the next few years, Bianchi was moved from one prison camp to the next, living in wretched conditions. His fellow prisoners would remember his efforts to help them, though. He bartered with their Japanese captors for food, and he tended to the sick.

He must have been amazing? Many prison camp survivors wrote his mother after the war, saying that they wouldn’t have survived but for Bianchi.

Sadly, Bianchi himself would not be among the survivors. On January 9, 1945, he was being held aboard a Japanese ship, Enoura Maru, when U.S. forces bombed the ship. The had no idea that they were firing on their own.

After the war, General Douglas MacArthur wrote Bianchi’s mother, noting that her son was among those who showed “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.”

Mrs. Bianchi was proud of her son and responded: “As a mother, I am proud to be able to give to this generation and to our beloved America the most precious gift that life makes possible, my only son.”

RIP, Sir.

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