FINAL RESTING PLACE

Dozens of U.S. War Graves Found on WW2 Pacific Battlefield

More than a thousand U.S. servicemen were killed in the 1943 Battle of Tarawa—more than 30 graves have been discovered 76 years later.

The graves of more than 30 U.S. Marines and sailors who died in one of the bloodiest battles of World War II have been discovered. The remains are believed to belong to servicemen killed during the three-day Battle of Tarawa, which took place on a remote island around 2,300 miles southwest of Honolulu. The remains were discovered by History Flight—a nonprofit that searches for the remains of U.S. servicemen. The remains are likely to be flown to Hawaii for forensic anthropologists to work to identify them using dental records and DNA. More than 990 U.S. Marines and 30 U.S. sailors were killed in the 1943 Battle of Tarawa. The servicemen came under heavy Japanese machine-gun fire when their boats got stuck on the reef at low tide, and those who made it to the beach were engaged in brutal hand-to-hand combat. The fallen were buried in makeshift cemeteries.