Remains of WWII Veteran Will Be Returned After 80 Years

The remains of a young WWII veteran who died over 80 years ago will finally be returned home.

U.S. Army Pvt. Blanchard Pruitt of Florien, La., was 19 years old when he died in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in the Philippines on Jan. 1, 1943, per a press release from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA). His remains were identified in March, and he will be buried in Louisiana in September.

Blanchard was the second-eldest of eight siblings, and his family had been working to find his remains for decades, per local news outlet WLBT 5.

“My grandparents didn’t know that he died. They knew he was missing and they knew he was captured, but they didn’t know he died for probably about eight or nine months. And then they got a letter,” his niece, Sherry, told the outlet.

“They’re all gone now,” she said of her uncle’s immediate relatives. “So, we’re [the younger generation] the ones that are going to get the closure on this finally.”

Sherry also told the outlet that her uncle was only 17 years old when he enlisted in the U.S. army. 

“He probably just didn’t tell the truth about his age, because he went in before my dad, and my dad was older,” she said, adding. “A lot of boys did that at that time. They would say, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m 18.’ You know they were desperate for soldiers.”

Sherry said that her uncle was ultimately identified with the help of a DNA sample provided by her brother, Danny, at the request of her older sister, Sheila. 

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“That’s how they found his remains. They’re 100 percent sure that he is ours,” Sherry said.

She added that the family plans to hold a wake for Blanchard before giving him a proper burial, and said he will ultimately be laid to rest next to his mother.

“She always missed him […]. She knew he was in a very, very, very terrible place,” Sherry said, referring to the prison camp. “It was an awful place there.”

Blanchard, who was stationed in the Pacific, was captured in 1942. He was one of the over 70,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war subjected to the 65-mile Bataan Death March before he was ultimately imprisoned at a camp in Cabanatuan, a city in the Philippines. 

His unidentified remains were buried in a cemetery in Manila, where they remained for decades.