For an island frozen in time, the digging has stopped, but the dust hasn’t settled.
We've returned to the Pacific atoll of Tarawa, a sandbar the size of the National Mall. The island is filled with the wreckage of war, on a stretch of secluded coral coast between Hawaii and Australia.
It’s where our reporting first pinpointed an exact, and in many respects, atrocious number – 452 Americans from World War II are still lost somewhere on or around this island, never returned for burial in America.
The military motto, “leave no one behind,” is tested here.
It’s been a year now since we started investigating this subject, and our reporting strongly suggests 400+ Americans remain here largely because of a historical lack of effort from our own government.
After the Battle of Tarawa on Nov. 23, 1943, the American war dead had to be quickly buried. There were almost 1,000 U.S. casualties from the immediate assault, with no time to fly them home.
Instead, they were buried in mass trenches, graves hastily marked on crude maps. In a matter of weeks, the original American forces left Tarawa, and Navy construction battalions built roads, parking lots and storage areas on top of these sacred resting places.
Individual white crosses were in many cases ceremonial, with no bodies underneath – a way to beautify the island for LIFE Magazine photographers.
By 1949, the U.S. government largely abandoned efforts to find the missing war dead. Fast forward to the present, a non-profit group of anthropologists known as History Flight leads the effort.
On March 14, 2018, History Flight will return 16 groups of American remains to the U.S. Marines– one full skeleton, and other bones belonging to unknown service members.
It’s known as a repatriation ceremony on Tarawa – similar to what one sees at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Caskets draped with American flags, escorted on the tarmac by a full military guard.
But instead of the caskets loaded off the aircraft in Delaware, they will be loaded onto a small C-20 plane on Tarawa, bound for Pearl Harbor and DNA testing.
FULL INVESTIGATION: Fallen & Forgotten: Why were these missing WWII heroes buried under pavement?
The American remains were found after WUSA9 first visited Tarawa in June 2017.
The partial government shutdown in January 2018 first canceled the latest Tarawa repatriation mission, with no date immediately rescheduled.
But after WUSA9 informed a White House official of the cancelation, the official said there would be movement on the subject.
PHOTOS: Tarawa past and present
The Trump administration official first confirmed the rescheduled event in February, followed by Pentagon confirmation hours later.
Currently, no excavation work is underway on the island. The stillness contrasts with what we documented last summer, with extensive activity and digs that unearthed multiple U.S. Marines.
History Flight is now waiting for a government contract to begin, in order to fund future finds. The non-profit previously used private funds and donations to initiate the latest major excavation, with the government providing a partial reimbursement.
Officials who oversee the contracts, from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, will attend the ceremony Wednesday. They are set to update History Flight on the status of future funding.
Mike Valerio will remain on the island until Thursday, March 15, documenting the repatriation ceremony. WUSA9 is also set to update where recovery efforts stand for future reports debuting in May.
