On June 3, 2019, Navy Reserve Pharmacist's Mate 3rd Class William Horace Blancheri, 19, killed in World War II, was finally laid to rest - in American soil - with full military honors.
William was the youngest of 5 children blessed to the union of Louis Charles and Anna Gertrude (nee Fisher) Blanceri.
William enlisted in the Navy on August 14, 1941. He went to boot camp at NTS in San Diego, to Marine School at Camp Elliott, then overseas in January of 1943. He was stationed in New Zealand until shortly before the Tarawa action.
PHM3 Blancheri was with his brothers in Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion when they landed on Betio as part of Operation: GALVANIC. The mission of the 2nd Marine Division was to secure the island in order to control the Japanese airstrip in the Tarawa Atoll; thereby preventing the Japanese Imperial forces from getting closer to the United States, and enabling US forces to get closer to mainland Japan. It would become one of the bloodiest battles in the Corps history.
On November 20, 1943 (D-Day for the "Battle of Tarawa), young William - just years old - perished.
Left to mourn his passing were William's parents and siblings, Genevieve Camille (Mrs Francis Martell), Clyde Willoughby , Lucille Jeanette (Mrs Leonard Dunn) and Louis Charles, Jr.
The battle of Tarawa was a significant victory for the U.S. military because the Gilbert Islands provided the U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet a platform from which to launch assaults on the Marshall and Caroline Islands to advance their Central Pacific Campaign against Japan.
In the immediate aftermath of the fighting on Tarawa, U.S. service members who died in the battle were buried in a number of battlefield cemeteries on the island. Blancheri was reportedly buried in Cemetery #26. The 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company conducted remains recovery operations on Betio between 1946 and 1947, but Blancheri's remains were not identified. All of the remains found on Tarawa were sent to the Schofield Barracks Central Identification Laboratory for identification in 1947. By 1949, the remains that had not been identified were interred in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP) in Honolulu.
On Dec. 5, 2016, the Department of Veterans Affairs disinterred Tarawa Unknown X-016 from the NMCP, and sent the remains to the laboratory.
The DPAA announced that Navy Reserve Pharmacist's Mate 3rd Class William Horace Blancheri, 19, of Los Angeles, killed during World War II, was accounted for Aug. 14, 2018. To identify his remains, scientists from Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial (mtDNA) DNA analysis, dental, anthropological and chest radiograph comparison analysis, as well as circumstantial and material evidence.
William was finally returned to his family and, on June 3, 2019, laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. (199621803)
Navy Reserve Pharmacist's Mate 3rd Class William Horace Blancheri is memorialized within the Manila American Cemetery. Although PH3C Blancheri has now been recovered and identified, his name shall remain permanently inscribed among the "Walls of the Missing". A rosette was place next to his name indicating that William has finally been found.
SOURCE:
DPAA Release No: 18-264 (Dec. 17, 2018)
DPAA Recent News & Stories (Aug. 27, 2018)
American Battle Monuments Commission
Jennifer Morrison, independent volunteer forensic genealogist
William was the youngest of 5 children blessed to the union of Louis Charles and Anna Gertrude (nee Fisher) Blanceri.
William enlisted in the Navy on August 14, 1941. He went to boot camp at NTS in San Diego, to Marine School at Camp Elliott, then overseas in January of 1943. He was stationed in New Zealand until shortly before the Tarawa action.
PHM3 Blancheri was with his brothers in Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion when they landed on Betio as part of Operation: GALVANIC. The mission of the 2nd Marine Division was to secure the island in order to control the Japanese airstrip in the Tarawa Atoll; thereby preventing the Japanese Imperial forces from getting closer to the United States, and enabling US forces to get closer to mainland Japan. It would become one of the bloodiest battles in the Corps history.
On November 20, 1943 (D-Day for the "Battle of Tarawa), young William - just years old - perished.
Left to mourn his passing were William's parents and siblings, Genevieve Camille (Mrs Francis Martell), Clyde Willoughby , Lucille Jeanette (Mrs Leonard Dunn) and Louis Charles, Jr.
The battle of Tarawa was a significant victory for the U.S. military because the Gilbert Islands provided the U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet a platform from which to launch assaults on the Marshall and Caroline Islands to advance their Central Pacific Campaign against Japan.
In the immediate aftermath of the fighting on Tarawa, U.S. service members who died in the battle were buried in a number of battlefield cemeteries on the island. Blancheri was reportedly buried in Cemetery #26. The 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company conducted remains recovery operations on Betio between 1946 and 1947, but Blancheri's remains were not identified. All of the remains found on Tarawa were sent to the Schofield Barracks Central Identification Laboratory for identification in 1947. By 1949, the remains that had not been identified were interred in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP) in Honolulu.
On Dec. 5, 2016, the Department of Veterans Affairs disinterred Tarawa Unknown X-016 from the NMCP, and sent the remains to the laboratory.
The DPAA announced that Navy Reserve Pharmacist's Mate 3rd Class William Horace Blancheri, 19, of Los Angeles, killed during World War II, was accounted for Aug. 14, 2018. To identify his remains, scientists from Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial (mtDNA) DNA analysis, dental, anthropological and chest radiograph comparison analysis, as well as circumstantial and material evidence.
William was finally returned to his family and, on June 3, 2019, laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. (199621803)
Navy Reserve Pharmacist's Mate 3rd Class William Horace Blancheri is memorialized within the Manila American Cemetery. Although PH3C Blancheri has now been recovered and identified, his name shall remain permanently inscribed among the "Walls of the Missing". A rosette was place next to his name indicating that William has finally been found.
SOURCE:
DPAA Release No: 18-264 (Dec. 17, 2018)
DPAA Recent News & Stories (Aug. 27, 2018)
American Battle Monuments Commission
Jennifer Morrison, independent volunteer forensic genealogist
On June 3, 2019, Navy Reserve Pharmacist's Mate 3rd Class William Horace Blancheri, 19, killed in World War II, was finally laid to rest - in American soil - with full military honors.
William was the youngest of 5 children blessed to the union of Louis Charles and Anna Gertrude (nee Fisher) Blanceri.
William enlisted in the Navy on August 14, 1941. He went to boot camp at NTS in San Diego, to Marine School at Camp Elliott, then overseas in January of 1943. He was stationed in New Zealand until shortly before the Tarawa action.
PHM3 Blancheri was with his brothers in Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion when they landed on Betio as part of Operation: GALVANIC. The mission of the 2nd Marine Division was to secure the island in order to control the Japanese airstrip in the Tarawa Atoll; thereby preventing the Japanese Imperial forces from getting closer to the United States, and enabling US forces to get closer to mainland Japan. It would become one of the bloodiest battles in the Corps history.
On November 20, 1943 (D-Day for the "Battle of Tarawa), young William - just years old - perished.
Left to mourn his passing were William's parents and siblings, Genevieve Camille (Mrs Francis Martell), Clyde Willoughby , Lucille Jeanette (Mrs Leonard Dunn) and Louis Charles, Jr.
The battle of Tarawa was a significant victory for the U.S. military because the Gilbert Islands provided the U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet a platform from which to launch assaults on the Marshall and Caroline Islands to advance their Central Pacific Campaign against Japan.
In the immediate aftermath of the fighting on Tarawa, U.S. service members who died in the battle were buried in a number of battlefield cemeteries on the island. Blancheri was reportedly buried in Cemetery #26. The 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company conducted remains recovery operations on Betio between 1946 and 1947, but Blancheri's remains were not identified. All of the remains found on Tarawa were sent to the Schofield Barracks Central Identification Laboratory for identification in 1947. By 1949, the remains that had not been identified were interred in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP) in Honolulu.
On Dec. 5, 2016, the Department of Veterans Affairs disinterred Tarawa Unknown X-016 from the NMCP, and sent the remains to the laboratory.
The DPAA announced that Navy Reserve Pharmacist's Mate 3rd Class William Horace Blancheri, 19, of Los Angeles, killed during World War II, was accounted for Aug. 14, 2018. To identify his remains, scientists from Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial (mtDNA) DNA analysis, dental, anthropological and chest radiograph comparison analysis, as well as circumstantial and material evidence.
William was finally returned to his family and, on June 3, 2019, laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. (199621803)
Navy Reserve Pharmacist's Mate 3rd Class William Horace Blancheri is memorialized within the Manila American Cemetery. Although PH3C Blancheri has now been recovered and identified, his name shall remain permanently inscribed among the "Walls of the Missing". A rosette was place next to his name indicating that William has finally been found.
SOURCE:
DPAA Release No: 18-264 (Dec. 17, 2018)
DPAA Recent News & Stories (Aug. 27, 2018)
American Battle Monuments Commission
Jennifer Morrison, independent volunteer forensic genealogist
William was the youngest of 5 children blessed to the union of Louis Charles and Anna Gertrude (nee Fisher) Blanceri.
William enlisted in the Navy on August 14, 1941. He went to boot camp at NTS in San Diego, to Marine School at Camp Elliott, then overseas in January of 1943. He was stationed in New Zealand until shortly before the Tarawa action.
PHM3 Blancheri was with his brothers in Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion when they landed on Betio as part of Operation: GALVANIC. The mission of the 2nd Marine Division was to secure the island in order to control the Japanese airstrip in the Tarawa Atoll; thereby preventing the Japanese Imperial forces from getting closer to the United States, and enabling US forces to get closer to mainland Japan. It would become one of the bloodiest battles in the Corps history.
On November 20, 1943 (D-Day for the "Battle of Tarawa), young William - just years old - perished.
Left to mourn his passing were William's parents and siblings, Genevieve Camille (Mrs Francis Martell), Clyde Willoughby , Lucille Jeanette (Mrs Leonard Dunn) and Louis Charles, Jr.
The battle of Tarawa was a significant victory for the U.S. military because the Gilbert Islands provided the U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet a platform from which to launch assaults on the Marshall and Caroline Islands to advance their Central Pacific Campaign against Japan.
In the immediate aftermath of the fighting on Tarawa, U.S. service members who died in the battle were buried in a number of battlefield cemeteries on the island. Blancheri was reportedly buried in Cemetery #26. The 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company conducted remains recovery operations on Betio between 1946 and 1947, but Blancheri's remains were not identified. All of the remains found on Tarawa were sent to the Schofield Barracks Central Identification Laboratory for identification in 1947. By 1949, the remains that had not been identified were interred in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP) in Honolulu.
On Dec. 5, 2016, the Department of Veterans Affairs disinterred Tarawa Unknown X-016 from the NMCP, and sent the remains to the laboratory.
The DPAA announced that Navy Reserve Pharmacist's Mate 3rd Class William Horace Blancheri, 19, of Los Angeles, killed during World War II, was accounted for Aug. 14, 2018. To identify his remains, scientists from Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial (mtDNA) DNA analysis, dental, anthropological and chest radiograph comparison analysis, as well as circumstantial and material evidence.
William was finally returned to his family and, on June 3, 2019, laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. (199621803)
Navy Reserve Pharmacist's Mate 3rd Class William Horace Blancheri is memorialized within the Manila American Cemetery. Although PH3C Blancheri has now been recovered and identified, his name shall remain permanently inscribed among the "Walls of the Missing". A rosette was place next to his name indicating that William has finally been found.
SOURCE:
DPAA Release No: 18-264 (Dec. 17, 2018)
DPAA Recent News & Stories (Aug. 27, 2018)
American Battle Monuments Commission
Jennifer Morrison, independent volunteer forensic genealogist
Inscription
BLANCHERI WILLIAM H • PHARMACIST'S MATE 2C • USNR • CALIFORNIA
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