Lost in 1942, WWII Soldier Will Be Laid to Rest at Kentucky Veterans Cemetery
Hirst entered the U.S. Army Air from Washington and was a member of the Medical Detachment, 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 forced on the Bataan Death March. He was ultimately interned in the notorious Cabanatuan Prison Camp in Nueva Ecija Province, where he died of malaria on July 5, 1942.
Hirst was buried in Common Grave 409 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. Some of the sets of remains from Common Grave 409 were identified, but the rest were declared unidentifiable and were buried at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial as Unknowns.
In November 2019 and January 2020, as part of the Cabanatuan Project, the remains associated with Common Grave 409 were disinterred and sent to the DPAA laboratory for forensic analysis. The laboratory analysis and the total circumstantial evidence available identified one set of the remains as those of Hirst.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency accounted for Hirst on April 6, 2026.
For more information on DPAA’s efforts to locate and identify Pierce, please visit: [https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaProfile?id=a0Jt0000000cd10EAA](https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaProfile?id=a0Jt0000000cd10EAA)
U.S. Army Human Resources Command’s Past Conflict Repatriations Branch plays a vital role in the process of identifying, locating and contacting subsequent generation family members of Soldiers missing or killed in action during WWII and the Korean War to positively identify previously undiscovered or unknown remains.
Media interested in covering and/or obtaining more information about the funeral and interment should contact Schoppenhorst Underwood and Brooks Funeral Home, 502-957-5200.
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