Remains of brother killed in WWII finally back home
PHILADELPHIA — For nearly 70 years, Dominic Ragucci believed his brother Emil’s body had been swept out to sea during a World War II battle on a Pacific atoll.
But on Monday, Dominic, 86, and his brother Victor, 91, stood on a tarmac in Philadelphia to greet Emil’s remains as he finally made it home, accompanied from Atlanta by a Marine honor guard.
Their mother, who died many years ago, had yearned for such a day. She had buried another son who died in the war and had always hoped Emil could be returned, too.
“My mother always had that on her mind. ‘I want my boy back. I want my boy back,’” Dominic said. “To me, it seemed like a hopeless task.”
Dominic and Victor are the last survivors of an 11-sibling family.
Five brothers fought in the war, and two died fewer than 90 days apart. Nicholas, killed in Italy in 1944, was brought home right after the war. Emil, who died in 1943, remained lost on the Central Pacific atoll of Tarawa, where more than 1,000 Marines were killed in a three-day battle as they stormed the beach.
In 1949, the military notified hundreds of families, including the Raguccis, that their loved ones were unrecoverable, listing them as either unknown or lost at sea.
Many men who died in the battle were buried in makeshift graveyards and were moved without diligent record-keeping to make way for an airstrip on the island midway between Hawaii and Australia.
A breakthrough came as a result of the work of History Flight Inc., a nonprofit group of forensic anthropologists, archaeologists and other volunteers formed to help repatriate the remains of American soldiers missing in action.
In 2013, they found what was labeled Cemetery 33, a small plot of land with a couple dozen sets of remains.
Six years ago, Dominic contacted the Marines and requested a kit to submit his DNA. Last November, the Marines called to say Emil’s remains had been identified in those found by History Flight.