The Sacred Search
Most of the Second Marine
Division had departed Tarawa by November 24, 1943, just three days after the
amphibious assault had begun.
Chaplains and personnel from other units were left to deal with the
dead.
The Navy renamed Division
Cemetery #3 as “Cemetery 27” and
erected a monument with a memorial plaque inscribed with the names of men reportedly
buried at that site. Sergeant
Moore’s name, however, was not on the plaque.
Following the war, in early
1946, a detachment of men from the 604th Quartermaster Graves
Registration Company (604th QM GR Co.) arrived on Tarawa and began recovery
operations that lasted until May.
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| (Photo courtesy of History Flight) |
The Graves Registration unit
moved all American remains found on Tarawa to a central cemetery named Lone
Palm Cemetery “for later return to Hawaii.” Fae Moore’s remains were not among
them.
Later reports noted that “Through bad record keeping, massive
reconstruction on the island, and poor memories, almost half of the known
casualties on the island were never found: of the slightly more than 1,100 expected, only 532 sets of
remains, from 41 separate burial sites were found and re-interred at Lone Palm
Cemetery.”
The 604th returned
to Betio Island in 1947 and removed all of the remains from Lone Palm Cemetery
to a laboratory at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii for further identification. After extensive efforts to identify all
of the remains, it was determined that none of them could be associated with
Sergeant Fae Moore – or any of the
Marines buried with him in Cemetery 27.
It was if the cemetery had never existed.
On February 24, 1947, Marine
Commandant General A. A. Vandegrift sent a two-page letter to Mary Moore,
noting the “fierce stress of battle on
this small island” (Tarawa) and explaining that “hasty burial methods could not be avoided, and, consequently, we were
unable to survey and to chart the burial places with full accuracy or to record
all the details of burial information.”
After several paragraphs,
the General wrote: “I regret extremely that I must inform you
that the remains of your son were not found to be beneath the marker previously
reported. Subsequent investigation
has revealed that in some instances well-meaning persons had erected individual
commemorative markers in memory of our heroic dead.”
General Vandegrift
concluded, “I am deeply grieved that
there must now be added to your sorrow this most distressing information. It is earnestly hoped that the
continuing and unremitting efforts which will be made may yet lead to the location
and identification of your son’s remains, in which event you will be notified
immediately.”
The General was right. It was yet another grievous blow to the
Moore family.
“Grandma was really
broken up by the news,” remembers her granddaughter, Mildred Moore Cooley.
“After all, Fae was her
baby boy. And with no body to
bring home for burial, that was really disturbing.”
Mary Moore was determined that the Marine Corps would find and identify her son's remains. During the first week of March 1947 she wrote two letters to General Vandegrift, advising him:
"I have a letter sent me Feb. 44 telling me just where the grave was...it is as follows -- Grave 23, Row "A" Division Cemetery 3, Tarawa Atoll, Gilbert Islands...I know he also has his watch buried with him and it has his name on it. I have a letter from one of his buddies telling me all about how he was buried and I know he is not among the unknown."
"I will not give up," she proclaimed. And she didn't.
But her son was not found. Nor were hundreds of others who had died on Tarawa.
Mary Moore was determined that the Marine Corps would find and identify her son's remains. During the first week of March 1947 she wrote two letters to General Vandegrift, advising him:
"I have a letter sent me Feb. 44 telling me just where the grave was...it is as follows -- Grave 23, Row "A" Division Cemetery 3, Tarawa Atoll, Gilbert Islands...I know he also has his watch buried with him and it has his name on it. I have a letter from one of his buddies telling me all about how he was buried and I know he is not among the unknown."
"I will not give up," she proclaimed. And she didn't.
But her son was not found. Nor were hundreds of others who had died on Tarawa.
By 1949 all of the U.S.
servicemen that had been found buried on Tarawa – including the “unknowns” – were transported
to the the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu for burial in
the so-called “Punchbowl Cemetery.” Some, however, were sent to the United
States.
On February 28 1949, a Board
of Review declared the remains of Marine Sergeant Fae Moore as “non-recoverable.” That determination was surely sad news
for Mary Moore, who – at age 73 – may have concluded that her boy would never
come home.
In fact, the passage of time
and development on Tarawa in the subsequent decades of the 20th century would seem to have proven her right. The Korean War came and went, and the dead on Tarawa seemed
not only lost – but forgotten.
Mary Moore died December 1, 1958 in Chadron, Nebraska, at age 82, never
to see the return of her son’s remains.
The notion that there were
any Marines or Sailors still buried on Tarawa seemed to have vanished from
public consciousness for more than 60 years.
In the 1970’s, the
Department of Defense (DOD) established Central
Identification Laboratories in Thailand and Hawaii in an effort to coordinate
POW/MIA recovery efforts in Southeast Asia – and eventually to recover and
identify missing Americans from all previous conflicts. In 2004, DOD established a task force
called the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) to account for Americans
listed as Prisoners of War or Missing in Action from all past wars and
conflicts.
In the private sector, a new
non-profit organization called “History Flight” was taking shape. Founded in 2006 by Mark Noah, an airline
pilot and aviation historian, History Flight is based in Marathon, Florida and
was originally focused on “keeping World
War II aviation history alive.” But it wasn’t long before that changed.
Noah and his History Flight crew visited Tarawa in 2006
searching – not for buried Marines – but for a downed airplane lost to history
in the Betio lagoon. It was then that
Noah learned about the “lost graves of Tarawa.” History Flight conducted extensive archival research in a
quest for more clues about the graves.
Two years later a History Flight team returned to Tarawa to locate
former cemetery sites and scan them with ground penetrating radar for any remains. They located 11 of the lost graveyards
and the remains of some 123 Marines.
On the government side, JPAC
began to stumble. Following a series of scandals and a revelation by the
Associated Press of an internal government study alleging inept, wasteful, and
corrupt management, JPAC came under the close scrutiny of Congress. Their motto had been “Until they
are home,” but Congress, the media, and some of the American public began
having reservations about their work.
Next Page: FINDING OUR FALLEN
