WASHINGTON — Almost 75-years to the day World War Two ended, a Marine from Indiana who died during fighting in the Pacific, has been accounted for.
Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, bringing to an end a war that claimed more than 400,000 U.S. lives. Among them was 19-year-old Marine Corps Reserve Pfc. Charles Miller of Albany, northeast of Muncie.
According to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Miller of Company A, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, 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.
This was in November, 1943. Over several days of intense fighting at Tarawa, approximately 1,000 Marines and Sailors were killed and more than 2,000 were wounded, while the Japanese were virtually annihilated. Miller died on the third day of battle, Nov. 22, 1943. He was reported to have been buried on the island.
In 1946, the military centralized all of the American remains found on Tarawa at Lone Palm Cemetery for later return to the U.S. However, more than half of the known casualties were never found. No recovered remains could be associated with Miller, and, in October 1949, a Board of Review declared him “non-recoverable.”
In 2009, History Flight, Inc., a nonprofit organization, discovered burial sites on Betio Island. Excavations began and last year, remains recovered were transferred to a military lab in Hawaii.
To identify Miller’s remains, scientists used dental and anthropological analysis, as well as DNA and other evidence.
Miller will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. The date has not yet been decided on by the family.
