thedrifter
11-25-08, 06:37 AM
High-tech legwork IDs lost Marines
By Brian Bowling
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
A private group using technology and old records has found the remains of 139 Marines killed during the World War II Battle of Tarawa.
At least 23 of the Marines came from Pennsylvania, and at least seven from Allegheny County, according to Mark Noah, spokesman for History Flight of Marathon, Fla.
Although verification will depend upon the U.S. government's exhuming and identifying the remains at its forensics lab in Hawaii, Noah said Monday his organization is confident it has identified the people buried in eight mass graves by using a combination of Marine burial maps, ground-penetrating radar and interviews with the island's residents.
His group has not tried to exhume the remains or contact surviving family members.
"Our objective is not to interfere with people's personal lives. Our objective is to finish the program," Noah said.
History Flight is a nonprofit organization that offers public rides on restored World War II aircraft to raise money for finding some of the 78,000 people listed as missing in action from World War II.
Once it identifies the final resting place of a soldier, sailor, Marine or airman, History Flight notifies the Defense Department so it can start the process of identifying the service member and give him or her a burial either in the service member's home state or at a national cemetery in Hawaii.
The group spent $90,000 on a two-year joint project with another private military research organization, WFI Research Group of Fall River, Mass., to track down some of the 541 Marines listed as missing after the battle for Tarawa, part of the Gilbert Islands in the Pacific Ocean.
The Japanese heavily fortified the island because of its strategic location as an air base. The 2nd Marine Division invaded on Nov. 19, 1943, and over 76 hours, about 1,020 Marines were killed taking the island, according to the Defense Department's official account of the battle. About 4,240 Japanese soldiers -- all but 146 of the defenders -- were killed.
The Marines were buried in mass graves that were marked so their bodies could be retrieved later, but the markers apparently were moved during the subsequent construction of an air base to support the final push toward Japan, Noah said. When the Army returned after the war to retrieve the bodies, it found fewer than half of them, he said.
In military archives, researchers found the original Marine Corps burial maps. Matching those against the island's terrain, the group used ground-penetrating radar to confirm the burial sites and grave registries to determine who was buried in each site, he said.
"We're compiling all our data and getting ready to make a report to the government," Noah said.
Doug Drumheller of Franklin Park is part of a team trying to find Marines missing from the Battle of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. The team spent part of the summer going over the island with ground-penetrating radar, but water a few feet below the surface limited its effectiveness.
Like the Tarawa project, much of that effort is spent piecing together information from maps, log books and other records and matching it to terrain that has been altered by human efforts and natural forces such as typhoons.
"It's a very tedious process," Drumheller said.
Finding 139 of the Marines on Tarawa is a major accomplishment for History Flight and WFI Research Group, he said.
"These people were absolutely lost," he said.
Brian Bowling can be reached at bbowling@tribweb.com or 412-320-7910.
Ellie
By Brian Bowling
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
A private group using technology and old records has found the remains of 139 Marines killed during the World War II Battle of Tarawa.
At least 23 of the Marines came from Pennsylvania, and at least seven from Allegheny County, according to Mark Noah, spokesman for History Flight of Marathon, Fla.
Although verification will depend upon the U.S. government's exhuming and identifying the remains at its forensics lab in Hawaii, Noah said Monday his organization is confident it has identified the people buried in eight mass graves by using a combination of Marine burial maps, ground-penetrating radar and interviews with the island's residents.
His group has not tried to exhume the remains or contact surviving family members.
"Our objective is not to interfere with people's personal lives. Our objective is to finish the program," Noah said.
History Flight is a nonprofit organization that offers public rides on restored World War II aircraft to raise money for finding some of the 78,000 people listed as missing in action from World War II.
Once it identifies the final resting place of a soldier, sailor, Marine or airman, History Flight notifies the Defense Department so it can start the process of identifying the service member and give him or her a burial either in the service member's home state or at a national cemetery in Hawaii.
The group spent $90,000 on a two-year joint project with another private military research organization, WFI Research Group of Fall River, Mass., to track down some of the 541 Marines listed as missing after the battle for Tarawa, part of the Gilbert Islands in the Pacific Ocean.
The Japanese heavily fortified the island because of its strategic location as an air base. The 2nd Marine Division invaded on Nov. 19, 1943, and over 76 hours, about 1,020 Marines were killed taking the island, according to the Defense Department's official account of the battle. About 4,240 Japanese soldiers -- all but 146 of the defenders -- were killed.
The Marines were buried in mass graves that were marked so their bodies could be retrieved later, but the markers apparently were moved during the subsequent construction of an air base to support the final push toward Japan, Noah said. When the Army returned after the war to retrieve the bodies, it found fewer than half of them, he said.
In military archives, researchers found the original Marine Corps burial maps. Matching those against the island's terrain, the group used ground-penetrating radar to confirm the burial sites and grave registries to determine who was buried in each site, he said.
"We're compiling all our data and getting ready to make a report to the government," Noah said.
Doug Drumheller of Franklin Park is part of a team trying to find Marines missing from the Battle of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. The team spent part of the summer going over the island with ground-penetrating radar, but water a few feet below the surface limited its effectiveness.
Like the Tarawa project, much of that effort is spent piecing together information from maps, log books and other records and matching it to terrain that has been altered by human efforts and natural forces such as typhoons.
"It's a very tedious process," Drumheller said.
Finding 139 of the Marines on Tarawa is a major accomplishment for History Flight and WFI Research Group, he said.
"These people were absolutely lost," he said.
Brian Bowling can be reached at bbowling@tribweb.com or 412-320-7910.
Ellie