By Deborah Larsen
Edwin John Lagerblade
Edwin John Lagerblade was born in Hillsdale, Illinois, on November 28, 1919, the son of Gustaf and Selma Johansson Lagerblade. The Lagerblade family moved from Illinois to Oakland County, Michigan, in 1928. Edwin attended Pontiac High School and worked as a service station attendant in Pontiac before the war. He married Mildred McRath of Lake Orion in 1940.
In April 1943, Edwin joined the U.S. Army Air Forces and was trained as an armorer-gunner. He was assigned to the 77th Bomb Squadron of the 28th Bombardment Group, flying B-25s from a base at Attu Island, Alaska. On December 30, 1944, Edwin was serving as gunner aboard a B-25 making an offensive sweep. The airplane was lost under unknown circumstances and believed to have crashed in the ocean southwest of the Komandorski Islands, Russia. Edwin’s remains were declared unaccounted for by the War Department.
Edwin John Lagerblade was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart. He is memorialized at the Courts of the Missing in Honolulu, Hawaii, and with a cenotaph in the Memorial to the Missing in Anchorage, Alaska.