POWMIA.INFO

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, recently accounted-for from World War II, are being returned to his family for burial with full military honors.

Marine Corps Reserve Pvt. Alberic M. Blanchette, 19, of Caribou, Maine, will be buried September 18 in his hometown. In November 1943, Blanchette was assigned to Company K, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, 2nd Marine Division, which landed against stiff Japanese resistance on the small island of Betio in the Tarawa Atoll of the Gilbert Islands, in an attempt to secure the island. Over several days of intense fighting at Tarawa, approximately 1,000 Marines and Sailors were killed and more than 2,000 were wounded, but the Japanese were virtually annihilated. Blanchette died on the first day of battle, Nov. 20, 1943.

Despite the heavy casualties suffered by U.S. forces, military success in the battle of Tarawa was a huge 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. The 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company conducted remains recovery operations on Betio between 1946 and 1947, but Blanchette’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.

In October 2016, DPAA disinterred Tarawa Unknown X-153 from the NMCP and sent to the laboratory for analysis.

To identify Blanchette’s remains, scientists from DPAA used dental, anthropological and chest radiograph comparison analysis, which matched his records; as well as circumstantial evidence.

DPAA is appreciative to the Department of Veteran’s Affairs for their assistance in this mission.

Of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II, more than 400,000 died during the war. Currently there are 73,012 service members (approximately 26,000 are assessed as possibly-recoverable) still unaccounted for from World War II. Blanchette’s name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at an American Battle Monuments Commission site along with the others who are missing from WWII. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.