Summers,Arthur-Battle of Tarawa

U.S. Marine Corps Gunnery Sgt. Arthur B. Summers, 27 (inset), was killed and unaccounted for during the fight for Betio Island in the Tarawa Atoll, November 1943. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced this month that Summers' remains were recovered in 2009 and fully identified 10 years later, and would be reinterred in East Wenatchee.

 National Archives/DPAA photos

EAST WENATCHEE — The remains of an American Marine lost during World War II are coming home for interment in East Wenatchee.

The Department of Defense office that coordinates the search for servicemembers killed in action says the remains of Gunnery Sergeant Arthur B. Summers were officially identified in 2019.

Summers was killed in November 1943, during combat with Japanese forces on Betio Island in the Tarawa Atoll. Approximately 1,000 U.S. Marines and sailors died in the intense fighting for Tarawa. Almost half the known casualties were never found

Summers, originally from Poplar, Montana, served with Company I, 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division. He was killed in action sometime between November 23 and 24, 1943 during the amphibious assault on Betio.

Grave on Tarawa
Grave of an unknown American servicemember killed in the invasion of Betio Island, Tarawa Atoll, November, 20-23, 1943. Photographed in March 1944 by Lieutenant Commander Charles Kerlee, USNR. Approximately 1,000 U.S. Marines and sailors died in the intense fighting for Tarawa; almost half were never found.
 

After the fighting, the remains of Summers and other slain servicemembers were interred at a site on Betio Island known as Cemetery 33. After the war, efforts began to exhume and repatriate these remains. However, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency says Summers was not initially among those war dead recovered from the island, and in October 1949 a Board of Review declared him “non-recoverable.”

An excavation in 2009 on Betio by History Flight Inc., a nonprofit recovery agency, discovered the site of Cemetery 33, allowing further recoveries of lost servicemembers. In March 2019, History Flight located an additional burial trench west of Cemetery 33, which included remains determined to be those of Summers. All remains from this site were transferred to the DPAA Laboratory at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii.

Summers was officially identified in October 2019 from dental, anthropological and circumstantial evidence. The DPAA says he will be buried in East Wenatchee at an unspecified date.