Elmer F. Blonien, age 27, from Wisconsin, Wood county.
Service era: World War II
Date of death: Sunday, November 15, 1942
Death details: Following the Allied surrender on the Bataan Peninsula on April 9, 1942, the Japanese began the forcible transfer of American and Filipino prisoners of war to various prison camps in central Luzon, at the northern end of the Philippines. The largest of these camps was the notorious Cabanatuan Prison Camp. At its peak, Cabanatuan held approximately 8,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war that were captured during and after the Fall of Bataan. Camp overcrowding worsened with the arrival of Allied prisoners who had surrendered from Corregidor on May 6, 1942. Conditions at the camp were poor and food and water supplied 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. Prisoners were forced to bury the dead in makeshift communal graves often completed without records or markers. As a result, identifying and recovering remains interred at Cabanatuan was difficult in the years after the war. Private Elmer F. Blonien entered the U.S. Army from Wisconsin and served with Company A the 192nd Tank Battalion, which was stationed in the Philippines during the Battle of Bataan and subsequent American surrender. After the fall of Bataan, members of the 192nd Tank Battalion were sent on the Bataan Death March and eventually interned in prison camps throughout the Philippines. Private Blonien was held at the Cabanatuan Prisoner Camp, where he developed an abscess on his spleen and died on November 15, 1942. He was buried in a communal grave in the camp cemetery along with other deceased American POWs; however, his remains could not be associated with any remains recovered from Cabanatuan after the war. Today, Private Blonien is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.
Cemetery: Manila American Cemetery
Source: National Archives, American Battle Monuments Commission, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency
