Casket At Blakley Cemetery Exhumed And SentTo Hawaii For Additional Remains Eighty-four years after he was originally laid to rest, Staff Sergeant Paul Arthur Heggemeier was disinterred recently from Blakley Cemetery in Madison, as additional remains were identified from multiple soldiers who had been buried in the Philippines. Among those identified were remains of Staff Sergeant Heggemeier.
The son of Paul Sr. and Zella Heggemeier was raised in Madison and attended Madison schools. Staff Sergeant Heggemeier joined the United States Army because jobs were scarce in the 1930s. He served his country, paying the ultimate sacrifice in June 1942.
Records note that Staff Sergeant Heggemeier was serving at Nichols Field on the Philippine island Luzon, when Japanese forces began daily air raids shortly after the attack of Pearl Harbor. A full-scale invasion began on Dec. 22, 1941, and although forces held out for several months, despite shortages of food, supplies and ammunition, forces surrendered to the Japanese on April 9, 1942. The Prisoners of War (POW) were subjected to the 65-mile “Bataan Death March.” On June 29, 1942, Staff Sergeant Heggemeier succumbed to injuries while being a POW and was buried in a common grave with 24 or 25 other individuals who died on June 28 or 29, 1942. It is believed that he died of malaria and malnutrition.
Following the war, American Graves Registration Service (AGRS) personnel exhumed the Cabanatuan cemetery and relocated the remains to a temporary military cemetery that had been established near Manila.
Several months ago, the remains of some U.S. military personnel who died during World War II and were buried anonymously in the Philippines were returned to Hawaii, where staff worked to try and determine their identities.
According to the Associated Press, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency recently conducted an “honorable carry” ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam for about 40 sets of unidentified remains. The repatriation from the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial was one of the agency’s large disinterment projects, and the remains were examined at a lab at Hickam for possible identification by forensic anthropologists and others. During the process, staff found partial skeletal remains, following DNA testing, for Heggemeier, including the left and right humeri and radii and left fibula.
The agency said it made 120 identifications in the fiscal year ending in September, with 82 from WWII, 36 from the Korean War and two from the Vietnam War. The agency recorded 218 identifications in 2019, its highest yearly total.
Pictured above is a clipping from a March 1942 edition of The Madison News which notes that the Heggemeier family’s last received correspondence from Staff Sergeant Heggemeier was a letter written to his parents on Nov. 5, 1941. His oldest living blood relative is his nephew, Bob Kimberlin, of Madison.
Staff Sergeant Heggemeier is believed to return to Greenwood County, where he will once again be laid to rest next month, on Saturday, October 11. Additional details regarding the burial will be included in a future edition.
(Courtesy photo)
