World War II fighter’s remains brought home

Albany personnel escorted fellow Marine to Alabama.

MCLB-ALBANY — A Marine assigned to Marine Corps Logistics Base-Albany had the honor last week of bringing home a fellow Marine who had been missing for more than 70 years.

Gunnery Sgt. Melvin G. Ashley of MCLB-Albany was on a team that escorted the remains of World War II veteran Pfc. James O. Whitehurst, a Marine who was killed in 1943 and had since been listed as missing in action.

Whitehurst’s remains were escorted from Hawaii to Tallahassee, Fla., on April 18, and then to Glover Funeral Home in Dothan, Ala., in advance of a graveside funeral in Cowarts, Ala., the following day. A detail from MCLB-Albany participated in the service.

“This, by far, is one of my greatest achievements as a Marine,” Ashley said. “To have been given the privilege to bring a fallen Marine home from World War II was incredibly humbling. I feel as if he, in an unexplainable way, was the one escorting me, and not the other way around.”

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency reported on April 5 that Whitehurst’s remains had been identified earlier in the year and were being returned home for burial and full military honors. Whitehurst, 20, of Ashford, Ala., was assigned to Company E, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, at the time of his disappearance.

Whitehurst was among a group that landed against stiff Japanese resistance on Betio Island 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 over 2,000 wounded.

Whitehurst died on the first day of the battle, Nov. 20, 1943.

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.

In 1946 and 1947, the 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company conducted remains recovery operations on Betio, but Whitehurst’s remains were not recovered. In June 2015, History Flight Inc. notified DPAA that they discovered a burial site on Betio Island and recovered the remains of what they believed were 35 Marines who fought during the battle.

To identify Whitehurst’s remains, scientists from DPAA used dental and anthropological analysis, which matched his records, as well as circumstantial and material evidence.

DPAA reports that World War II veterans account for more than 73,000 service members yet to be found, including 2,906 Marines. The agency said there are 7,757 still missing from the Korean War, including 649 Marines; 1,611 are missing from the Vietnam War, including 202 Marines; and 126, including one Marine, from the Cold War.

For the Iraq Theater and other conflicts, from Operation El Dorado Canyon in 1986 to Operation Iraqi Freedom from 2003-2010, there are six individuals — none of them Marines — listed by DPAA as lost.