BETIO ISLAND, TARAWA ATOLL—The remains of 36 American Marines have been recovered on Tarawa, an atoll in the Pacific Ocean where more than 1,600 U.S. troops and more than 4,500 Japanese troops died in the three-day Battle of Tarawa in 1943. The search was coordinated by History Flight, a Florida charity dedicated to returning the remains of fallen soldiers to their families. Among the Americans was First Lieutenant Alexander “Sandy” Bonnyman, Jr., a Medal of Honor recipient who died on the second day of the battle, but it wasn’t known where he had been buried. Bonnyman’s grandson joined the archaeological expedition to the Republic of Kiribati to look for his grandfather’s remains. “I’ve been to Tarawa five times, I’ve dug holes in the sand, I’ve sifted sand, I’ve washed bones in the lab, I’ve called families asking for DNA samples and honestly we agreed that this is a needle in a haystack. So I was well and truly floored when I got a call saying they felt they had discovered cemetery 27 because if it was 27 then there was every indication we would find my grandfather,” Clay Bonnyman Evans told Radio New Zealand. Dental records were used to make the final identification of 1st Lt. Bonnyman. To read more, go to "Archaeology of World War II."
