WWII soldier’s long journey home ends in Ely

ELY- Ray “Rico” Mondati had already watched honor guards form around his uncle’s grave, heard the rifle volley, listened as taps sounded across Ely Cemetery, and looked skyward as a C-130 Hercules military transport aircraft crossed above the burial site.
But the moment that may have been most impactful came when the folded American flag was placed in his hands.
“I just couldn’t fathom it,” Rico said Saturday afternoon at the Veterans on the Lake reception, recalling the flag presentation for his uncle, Sgt. James Caesar Mondati. “It’s just surreal. I got my dad’s flag too, and all the brothers served, and it just really choked me up.”
For Rico and the rest of Mondati’s surviving family, Saturday’s burial closed a chapter that had remained unfinished since World War II. Mondati, an Ely native, 1937 graduate of Ely High School, and U.S. Army Air Forces sergeant, died as a prisoner of war in the Philippines on July 4, 1942. He was 22.
On Saturday, Mondati was buried beside his parents, Eugenio and Rosa Mondati, in a family plot that had been waiting for him for generations.
“His mother always wanted him home, hoping that he could one day be buried in a lot that she already bought, where she was buried,” Rico said. “She bought an extra lot, and she finally got her wish.”
Father Charles Friebohle, pastor of St. Anthony and St. Pius X, led the burial service as family members, veterans, and guests gathered around Mondati’s gravesite.
Honor guard members from numerous veterans organizations across the region, among them groups from Ely, Cook, and International Falls, lined the north side of the grave. Members of the Minnesota Patriot Guard, which had 15 riders present from its Hibbing, Duluth, and Detroit Lakes sectors, formed a line on the south side.
Military honors included a rifle volley and the playing of taps. The service closed with the C-130 flyover. The plane came in from the east, passing above the cemetery’s large cross memorial, then crossed over Mondati’s burial site before disappearing beyond a hill to the west.
The public recognition began even before Saturday’s burial. Mondati’s remains arrived in Ely around 4 p.m. on Friday and were escorted down Sheridan St. by law enforcement and emergency services vehicles.
Rico credited Nick Wognum of the Ely Echo and others in Ely for the memorable homecoming.
“It was crazy, and a lot of it had to do with people in Ely,” Rico said. “When they found out about it, they contacted me, and they wanted to make this homecoming something we could remember, never to be forgotten. And they did a very good job of it. It was all the town support.”
Rico never knew his uncle, who died before he was born. What he has learned about him has come through family history and letters James sent home before the war overtook him.
Mondati entered military service on Dec. 16, 1939, at a time when war had already begun in Europe and danger was growing elsewhere in the world. Rico said the letters suggest his uncle understood that uncertainty and chose to enlist before the draft.
“Things were getting kind of shady around the world, as everybody knows, and they didn’t know what was going to happen,” Rico said. “So he joined the military. Basically, he was hoping he could climb up the ranks a little bit, and hoping he could be in command or whatever instead of being in the trenches.”
Before entering the service, Mondati had worked for Cy Fortier, the Ely Theater, and at Civilian Conservation Corps camps. Rico said his uncle also saw military service as a chance to learn a trade.
“He basically wanted to learn some type of trade,” Rico said, adding that James hoped military service might lead to clerical work or a mechanic’s trade.
Mondati later served with the 19th Air Base Squadron, 20th Air Base Group, in the Philippines. Rico said one of the letters showed James had begun to enjoy Army life there and was thinking seriously about his future in the service.
“He started to really like and enjoy the Army life there, and he thought it was great,” Rico said. “And then he thought, I want to climb the ladder. He didn’t have a college degree to become a pilot, but he was trying to get any transcripts back from his school to say he had so many credits, hoping that he could climb the ladder and become a military pilot.”
Rico said James had written that if he could become a military pilot, he would stay in for 20 years.
“But about that time after that letter, all hell broke loose,” Rico said.
After U.S. and Filipino forces surrendered the Bataan Peninsula on April 9, 1942, Mondati became a prisoner of war. He was forced onto the Bataan Death March, an eight-day, 65-mile march in which prisoners endured starvation, disease, beatings, and abuse.
Rico said the men trapped in the Philippines had believed help would arrive.
“They always believed the help was coming,” he said. “Never showed up.”
Mondati was ultimately held at Cabanatuan Prison Camp, which held about 8,000 American and Filipino POWs at its peak. Food and water were extremely limited, and malnutrition, malaria, and dysentery were widespread. By the time the camp was liberated in early 1945, about 2,800 Americans had died there.
Mondati died there on July 4, 1942, from disease, malnutrition, and abuse. His family did not learn of his death until 1945, after U.S. forces liberated prisoners in the Philippines.
Rico said his father, Enrico Mondati, and other family members who served rarely spoke about the Bataan Death March or what James endured in the Philippines.
“My dad was in the service, along with two other of my uncles, and they never would talk about it,” Rico said. “And I can see why. When I finally read the book on the Bataan Death March, I could see why they didn’t want to tell me the story.”
After the war, military personnel exhumed POWs buried at the Cabanatuan camp cemetery and moved the remains to a temporary U.S. military mausoleum near Manila. Mondati’s remains were associated with Common Grave 409, designated for service members who died July 4-5, 1942. Eleven sets of remains from that grave were identified after the war, but 23 others were buried as unknowns at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial.
The Army Casualty and Mortuary Affairs Operations contacted surviving family members in 2018 seeking DNA samples. Rico and cousins provided DNA, which later helped confirm the identification.
In 2019, as part of the Cabanatuan Project, those unidentified remains were disinterred and sent to a Department of Defense laboratory for analysis. The work led to Mondati’s identification on March 17, making him the 125th person identified through the project.
For the family, Saturday’s burial was both a homecoming and a fulfillment of a hope that had outlived the people who first held it.
Rico said Rosa Mondati had once asked the government for a marker that could be placed at Ely Cemetery, so she would have a place to pay respects to her son while still hoping he might one day be returned. The request was denied, as the government was still sorting through records from the war.
A footstone for Mondati is expected to be placed at the cemetery next spring.
“She’s going to finally get her wish next spring,” Rico said. “Then I can go pay respects to all of them together.”
Rico said the veterans’ presence made the day especially moving.
“There was a lot of veterans there, and basically very teary-eyed,” Rico said. “It’s just the support that they gave.”
For Rico, the day ended with gratitude for the veterans.
“God bless our veterans,” he said. “I respect every veteran I see. I shake their hand and say thank you.”