In August 1942, two Marine companies from the 2nd Raider Battalion landed on Butaritari in the Gilbert Islands to destroy Japanese installations and divert enemy attention from Guadalcanal.
During two days of intense fighting on the South Pacific atoll, the Raiders killed 83 Japanese soldiers and destroyed two enemy seaplanes. Marines counted 14 of their own dead.
More than 100 Marines, including Maj. James Roosevelt -- son of President Franklin D. Roosevelt -- made their way back to two waiting Navy submarines.
But rough seas complicated the Marines' withdrawal, and it was not until they returned to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii that an accurate tally of the losses was made: 18 dead, 12 missing.
After 57 years, military officials believe they have recovered the remains of 20 of those Americans killed, possibly including Sgt. Clyde Thomason, who posthumously became the first Marine to be awarded a Medal of Honor during World War II.
The remains, recovered by the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii, were repatriated yesterday in a ceremony at Hickam Air Force Base. The laboratory will conduct DNA tests in an effort to positively identify the remains, a process that can take more than a year.
"When they pulled that plane in front of us, it was just like, 'Welcome home, boys,'" said Marine Gunnery Sgt. Darrell Farringer, 37, who spent all of this May on Butaritari -- known as Makin Atoll during the war -- while a recovery team searched unsuccessfully.
Farringer said he learned a week ago that a grave site containing 18 sets of remains had been found on the island and that two other sets were found at other locations.
"I was so happy. It was just like the raid is over, the Marines are home," he said. "It was almost a hollow feeling in my stomach to know that when I left there I had to leave those guys back."
Farringer hopes the recovery effort will continue until all the dead are found. That would mean additional investigations on Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands, where U.S. military officials believe nine of the 12 missing Raiders were executed after being captured by the Japanese.
The recovery effort, which began in August 1998, was spurred and assisted by surviving relatives of the dead and World War II veterans. An unsuccessful attempt to recover the remains of one of those killed on Butaritari was made in 1949.
"It's likely they slipped through the cracks," said Don Harn, 75, a veteran of the 3rd Raider Battalion and a director of the U.S. Marine Raiders Association.
"I got in it because I thought it was a shame for those people to have to be cast aside like that."
