«

»

The Missing Marines ofTarawa

By encinoman

The Princeton Alumni Weekly just published my cover story &;Issue in Doubt.&; 

It&;s about how the U.S. military lost track of hundreds of Marines killed at Tarawa in World War II, including Medal of Honor winner and former Princeton student Alexander Bonnyman&;and how despite the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), whose motto is: “Until they are home&;, depressing political considerations usually mean that the search for Vietnam-era remains get priority over missing WWII or Korean vets. Due partly to battle conditions, but largely to a series of screw-ups during and after the war, only 49% of the 1000 Marines killed over three days in November 1943 were ever found and repatriated to the U.S. Can Bonnyman and the other &;missing&; Marines be found and returned to their families?  I don&;t know&;but I do think the U.S. owes them a better effort.    

  Twelve-year-old Fran Bonnyman accepts the Medal of Honor awarded posthumously to her father, Alexander “Sandy” Bonnyman Jr. ’32, from Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal ’15 in 1947.

Tags: government-coverup, Michael-Goldstein, missing-Marines, Princeton, Tarawa

This entry was posted on May 12, 2009 at 9:37 pm and is filed under investigative-journalism.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Be the first to like this post.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Name * Email * Website

Comment

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <pre> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Notify me of follow-up comments via email. Subscribe to this site by email