Recently identified Nevada Marine killed in World War II to be buried with full military honors
Submitted by editor on Tue, 03/27/2018 - 7:49am
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced Tuesday that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, recently accounted-for from World War II, are being returned to his family for burial with full military honors.
Marine Corps Pvt. John M. Tillman, accounted for Sept. 5, 2017, will be buried April 6 in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. Tillman, 21, of Reno, Nev., was killed during World War II.
In November 1943, Tillman was assigned to Company F, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, which landed against stiff Japanese resistance on the small island of Betio in the Tarawa Atoll of the Gilbert Islands, in an attempt to secure the island.
Over several days of intense fighting at Tarawa, approximately 1,000 Marines and Sailors were killed and more than 2,000 were wounded, but the Japanese were virtually annihilated. Tillman died on the first day of the battle, Nov. 20, 1943.
Despite the heavy casualties suffered by U.S. forces, military success in the battle of Tarawa was a huge victory for the U.S. military because the Gilbert Islands provided the U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet a platform from which to launch assaults on the Marshall and Caroline Islands to advance their Central Pacific Campaign against Japan.
In the immediate aftermath of the fighting on Tarawa, U.S. service members who died in the battle were buried in a number of battlefield cemeteries on the island.
The 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company conducted remains recovery operations on Betio between 1946 and 1947, but Tillman's remains were not identified. All of the remains found on Tarawa were sent to the Schofield Barracks Central Identification Laboratory for identification in 1947. By 1949, the remains that had not been identified were interred in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP) in Honolulu.
On March 13, 2017, DPAA disinterred Tarawa Unknown X-35 from the NMCP and sent to DPAA for analysis.
To identify Tillman's remains, scientists from DPAA used dental, anthropological and chest radiograph comparison analysis, which matched his records, as well as circumstantial evidence.
DPAA is appreciative to the Department of Veterans Affairs for their partnership in this mission.
Of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II, more than 400,000 died during the war. Currently there are 72,948 service members (approximately 26,000 are assessed as possibly-recoverable) still unaccounted for from World War II. Tillman's name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at the NCMP, along with the others killed or lost in WWII. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.
For additional information on the Defense Department's mission to account for Americans who went missing while serving our country, visit the DPAA website at www.dpaa.mil, find us on social media at www.facebook.com/dodpaa
or call (703) 699-1420.
