Bordner, Henry D.
Army Private

Henry D. Bordner, age 24, from Silver Bow County Montana.

Service era: World War II

Date of death: Tuesday, October 20, 1942
Death details: On April 2, 2025, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of Pvt. Henry D. Bordner, missing from World War II. Bordner entered the U.S. Army Air Forces from Montana and served with Headquarters Company of the 194th Tank Battalion in the Philippines during World War II. He was captured following the American surrender of the Bataan Peninsula on April 9, 1942, and was ultimately interned in the notorious Cabanatuan Prison Camp in Nueva Ecija Province, where he died on Oct. 20, 1942. At its peak, Cabanatuan held approximately 8,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war that were captured during and after the Fall of Bataan. Conditions at the camp were poor, with food and water extremely limited, leading to widespread malnutrition and outbreaks of malaria and dysentery. By the time the camp was liberated in early 1945, approximately 2,800 Americans had died at Cabanatuan. Bordner was buried in Common Grave 701 at the local Cabanatuan Camp Cemetery along with other deceased American POWs. Following the war, American Graves Registration Service (AGRS) personnel exhumed those buried at the Cabanatuan cemetery and relocated the remains to a temporary U.S. military mausoleum near Manila. In 1947, the AGRS examined the remains in an attempt to identify them. Five of the seven sets of remains from Common Grave 701 were identified, but the remaining two were declared unidentifiable and were buried at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial as Unknowns. In 2020, the remains associated with Common Grave 701 were disinterred and sent to the DPAA laboratory for scientific study. The laboratory analysis and the totality of the circumstantial evidence available established an association between one set of unknown remains and Bordner.
Cemetery: Manila American Cemetery

Source: National Archives, American Battle Monuments Commission, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency