Two More Return
DPAA has identified and accounted for the following formerly-missing US personnel.
From World War II
• Pvt Alberic M. Blanchette, Company K, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, 2nd Marine Division, USMC, was lost on Tarawa on 20 November 1943. He was accounted for on 17 July 2017.
• Pvt Joseph Carbone, Company K, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, 2nd Marine Division, USMC, was lost on Tarawa on 20 November 1943. He was accounted for on 17 July 2017.
From Korea
• None
From Southeast Asia
• None
Welcome back, elder brothers-in-arms. Our apologies that your return took so long.
Rest in peace. You’re home now.
. . .
Over 73,000 US personnel remain unaccounted for from World War II; over 7,800 US personnel remain unaccounted for from the Korean War; and over 1,600 remain unaccounted for in Southeast Asia (SEA). Comparison of DNA from recovered remains against DNA from some (but not all) blood relatives can assist in making a positive ID for unidentified remains that have already been recovered, or which may be recovered in the future.
On their web site’s “Contact Us” page, DPAA now has FAQs. The answer to one of those FAQs describes who can and cannot submit DNA samples useful in identifying recovered remains. The chart giving the answer can be viewed here. The text associated with the chart is short and can be viewed in DPAA’s FAQs.
If your family lost someone in one of these conflicts and you qualify to submit a DNA sample, please arrange to submit one. By doing that you just might help identify the remains of a US service member who’s been repatriated but not yet been identified – as well as a relative of yours, however distant. Or you may help to identify remains to be recovered in the future.
Everybody deserves a proper burial. That’s especially true for those who gave their all while serving this nation.
Category: No Longer Missing
Rest in Peace, Marines.
Home from Tarawa, at long last. Rest in Peace, Marines.
Welcome home brothers. rest in peace in your home soil now.
Welcome home, brothers.
It’s amazing men are still being found there. It is so small you would think there wouldn’t be much left to find, but there is. The whole 3 mile scratch of dirt is covered with houses and they find some of them doing construction.
It would seem in the haste to complete the airstrip on the island, the burial plots were inadvertently bulldozed (I hope it was inadvertent) and the locations lost.
Welcome back, brothers.
Thank you for all you do DPAA!
And yet the USMC just left them there saying they could not be found. Then long after the war a bunch of civilians who actually cared and knew what they were doing find all these guys. This is not good publicity for the Corps.
I started to discuss it, and I guess I will have to get into it a little further.
The Marines spent 3 days subduing the island. Following pacification, the Marines had to bury the dead quickly because of the intense heat and decaying flesh – of which there was a lot. They marked the graves just like anywhere else in WWII and then the Marines had to leave the island to go rest and refit. Remember that one of the major problems for those on the island was the lack of drinking water. Many of the 50 gallon drums that they received full of water had once had fuel in them so there was a desperate need to get the men of the 2d Marine Division off the island so the crew could come in and repair/improve the runway.
Enter the Seabees. The CBs were under tremendous pressure to finish the runway and associated shelters and aprons, etc. I don’t know how it came to be, but some of the burial areas were bulldozed in their haste. Not sure if that was deliberate, or they thought they could dig them up after the war and the word didn’t pass down, or the crews just didn’t know they were there.
I don’t think that there is really blame that can be laid at anyone’s feet. Perhaps the Seabeas, but I wasn’t there and don’t know what was going on at the time.
I just found a good article on it:
https://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2017/3/1/the-lost-graves-of-tarawa/
Welcome home, men.
Rest well.
Alberic M. Blanchette was my great Uncle. Though he was lost long before I was born, I’ve always had so much respect for him. It’s going to be an incredible honor and humbling experience to greet him when he arrives back home to Caribou, Maine.