“After nearly 72 years, these remains that were lost, but not forgotten, due to the tenacity and hard work by a lot of people, have been brought back here to be positively identified and they’ll be returned to their families so they can be interred appropriately”, said Brig.
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The remains of more than three-dozen U.S. Marines missing in action during World War II were brought back to U.S. territory on Sunday in the largest single recovery of US MIAs.
History Flight has started identifying the remains, and the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency will complete the effort, the Marines said.
The U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) teamed up with History Flight to retrieve the remains of the marines from the distant Tarawa atoll.
The battle was marked by a few of the bloodiest scenes in the war, which saw American soldiers shot down by machine gun fire from the Japanese after their boats became entrenched on the reef by the low tide. Americans who made it to the beach faced brutal hand-to-hand combat. Of the 1,200 Koreans kept on the island as slave laborers, just 129 survived after the battle.
About 520 U.S. servicemen who served in the Battle of Tarawa in 1943 are still unaccounted for. Among them was 1st Lt. Alexander Bonnyman Jr., a recipient of the Medal of Honor, reports Hawaii news channel KHON2.
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“The lessons learned at Tarawa paved the way for our success in the Pacific campaign and eventual end to the war”. The Marathon, Florida-based organization used ground-penetrating radar, reviewed thousands of military documents and interviewed veterans to narrow down possible grave sites.
