A Marine whose remains were lost for more than 75 years following a hasty burial after the Battle of Tarawa in World War II will now be interred with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery, officials said this week.
In 2009, History Flight Inc., a Florida-based non-profit agency that searches for missing-in-action service members, discovered a burial site on Betio Island in the Tarawa Atoll. Several excavations have been conducted at the site since then, officials said.
In March 2019, unidentified remains found there were taken to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) lab in Hawaii. They were later identified as Private First Class Charles D. Miller, 19, from Albany, Ind., officials said.
Miller was among more than 1,000 Marines and sailors who were killed in the bloody, three-day battle. After the war, the military centralized all the American remains at a single cemetery for later repatriation.
However, almost half the known casualties were never found and in 1949, Miller was officially declared “non-recoverable,” according to DPAA officials.
Scientists with the agency confirmed his identity through dental and DNA analysis, along with an anthropological study and an examination of physical evidence found at the scene.
Miller’s family has not yet decided on a date for his military burial at Arlington National Cemetery.
• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.
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