From GyG'sMailbag: Via Milinet

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

Published: 3/30/00 Author: AFP

AUCKLAND, March 30 -

A mass grave of United States marines who went missing during
World War II in
the central Pacific has been found.


The find has led military authorities to appeal for witnesses
who may have
seen other soldiers beheaded by the Japanese.


A US Army official confirmed today the dead all came from the US
Marine's 2nd
Raider Battalion which attacked Japanese-occupied Butaritari
Island (then
known as Makin and now part of Kiribati) in August 1942.


Of the group, whose deputy commander was the then president's
son Major James
Roosevelt, 30 went missing and their fate has never been
determined.


Colonel David Pagano of the US Army's central identification
laboratory in
Hawaii said they had located a mass grave last December
containing 20 bodies.
At least 19 of them were marines but the other may be a local
person.


Pagano said they had now flown the bodies to Honolulu where they
will undergo
a year-long identification process based on dental records.


There is still no sign of the other missing soldiers but
historical evidence
points to nine marine prisoners being taken to Kwajalein in the
Marshall
Islands where they were beheaded by the Japanese.


Because none of the missing had been located until now it has
never been
known who was killed in battle and who was executed.


Pagano said their search would now move to Kwajalein, which is a
vast US Army
ballistic missile testing base.


"We have not located the ones who are believed to have died on
Kwajalein,"
Pagano said.


"We need to find good reliable witnesses who will lead us to
where they are
buried.


"We just know of the story and we know of the trace of what
presumably
happened. We have yet to get a witness to tell us where they
were buried or
if they were buried."


He said they would never give up looking for the remains.


"We consider each and every one of them American heroes. They
gave up their
lives for the country and they deserve to be bought back to
America for
proper resting and burial."


The original American attack on Butaritari led Japan to seize
New Zealand
coast watchers who were based on nearby atolls in the Gilbert
Islands chain.


On October 15, 1942, the New Zealanders taken then were part of
a group of 22
who were beheaded on Tarawa, now the capital of Kiribati.


It was never clear why the New Zealanders were executed but
coincidentally
the American executions occurred the next day on Kwajalein. Both
Tarawa and
Kwajalein were under the same joint Japanese commander and both
groups were
the only allied prisoners in the region at the time.

Has there been any progress regarding the mass graves

found in the Central Pacific area (or elsewhere).

The executions and beheadings of our Armed Forces by

the Japanese must be exposed to the general public so

that the public outcry concerning recent "transgressions" allegedly committed by our

servicemen/women appear to be minute in comparison.

The same holds true about the Germans executing our boys during the Battle of the Bulge. They took few prisoners.