New search set for lost Raiders
By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer
Nearly six decades after they were killed on remote Makin Atoll, 19 members of the 2nd Marine Raiders Battalion received a full-honors ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery as the result of a search for their remains by the Army's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawai'i.
U.S. Navy
But last month's ceremony wasn't the end of the story of the lost Makin Raiders, who landed on the atoll Aug. 17, 1942 — or of the lab's efforts to locate all of them.
Remains of lost members of the storied 2nd Marine Raiders may be on Kwajalein Atoll. A team from the Hawai'i-based Central Identification Laboratory will be deployed to search for the remains of nine Raiders believed executed there.
A team from the lab is expected to head to Kwajalein Atoll early next year to search for nine Raiders believed to have been executed there by the Japanese after their capture on Makin.
Research that led to Kwajalein has also uncovered evidence of possibly 21 more missing American servicemen there, including the crews of three B-24 bombers that went down in the Marshall Islands early in the war. The lab hopes to find them all.
The Hawai'i-based Central Identification Laboratory searches for, recovers and identifies the remains of unaccounted-for U.S. troops worldwide, sending 60 to 70 teams out annually.
Ben Carson, one of 222 Marine Raiders who fought on Makin — now called Butaritari — is thankful that the lab team is making the effort to find his fallen comrades.
"I'm proud they are doing this," said the 78-year-old Oregon man.
Carson is just not sure that the bodies of the Raiders — or those of the B-24 crewmen — will be found, because so much of Kwajalein has already been disturbed.
"In '43 when we captured (Kwajalein), there was so much ordnance buried there that Seabees dug down 4 feet in some cases. There's very little of that island that hasn't been plowed up," he said.
Kwajalein, 2,100 miles southwest of Honolulu, now is an Army base and home to the Kwajalein Missile Range.
Ginger Couden, a spokeswoman for the Central Identification Laboratory, said southwestern Kwajalein was selected as a starting point for the search. Testimony on war crimes, as well as the recollections of islanders, helped investigators choose the location.
Eleven Makin Raiders are still missing from the Makin Atoll raid, an early offensive against the Japanese that suffered from a multitude of errors, but which nevertheless rallied the nation after a string of Pacific defeats.
Col. Evans Carlson's Raiders — later glorified in movies such as "Gung Ho" with Randolph Scott — trained off Barbers Point and arrived at Makin under cover of night in two submarines.
Confusion led to some of the Raiders' being left behind after the attack, which briefly secured the island. Nine are believed to have been captured by arriving Japanese reinforcements and later beheaded on Kwajalein.
Carson said Japanese Vice Adm. Kose Abe, who was in charge of the Marshall Islands, drew a map of the execution site before he was hanged on Guam in 1946.
All 30 prisoners were executed around the same time in October 1942, Couden said. A Central Identification Laboratory team scheduled to leave for Kwajalein in January is likely to include an anthropologist, photographer, ordnance technician, medic, mortuary affairs specialist and linguist.
Although the trip primarily will be an investigation, Couden said, "We hope to excavate on the site, and we hope to recover some remains."
Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-5459.
