Description
National POW/MIA Recognition Day, we stood in Exeter, California, to honor a World War II hero — home at last.
The community gathered to honor their hometown son, a migrant farmworker who left Exeter to serve his country in the U.S. military. Today, on POW/MIA Recognition Day, his family laid him to rest beside his parents, in the town where he was raised — honored with a special flyover from the 144th Air Wing.
U.S. Army Air Forces Sgt. Adolph P. Aguirre was just 21, serving as an assistant radio operator aboard a B-24 Liberator, when his bomber was shot down on August 16, 1943, during a mission against the San Nicola airfield near Foggia, Italy. His plane was one of 25 B-24s in the formation that day — nine were lost to intense anti-aircraft fire. Aguirre never returned.
With the crash site under enemy control, Allied forces couldn't search for survivors. No evidence ever surfaced that he had survived or been captured, and postwar searches failed to recover his remains. In 1950, he was declared non-recoverable.
Decades later, investigators began examining unidentified remains recovered near Lacedonia, Italy. Five sets were exhumed and sent to a Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency laboratory, where anthropological and dental analysis, circumstantial evidence, and DNA testing finally provided an answer. On May 29, 2026, Sgt. Aguirre was accounted for.
Eighty-three years after he went missing, Sgt. Aguirre is finally home. Laid to rest today in his hometown of Exeter, California, beside the parents who spent their lives never knowing what became of their son — their long wait, and his, is over.
We are honored to have walked beside this family.
Welcome home, Hero. 🇺🇸
#WWII #Aviation #USAAF #POWMIARecognitionDay