13 Marines Killed in ’42 Laid to Rest

Even though her cross-country flight had arrived late the night before, Olive Holtom was up and ready to go. The 88-year-old Alhambra woman had waited 59 years to see her brother-in-law receive a proper burial and was not about to be deterred by an early-morning wake-up call and bus ride to Arlington National Cemetery.

Holtom and her family were among the hundreds of relatives, soldiers and Marines who gathered at the cemetery Friday to honor 13 World War II Marines killed during an August 1942 raid on the Japanese-held Makin Atoll in the South Pacific.

The bodies of 19 men of the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion were discovered two years ago on the small island, now called Butaritari, where they had been in a mass grave for nearly six decades. World War II veterans and relatives of Marines in the battalion had begun searching for the island grave site in 1998. They were tipped off to its location by a local resident who helped bury the men when he was a boy.

Thirteen flag-draped coffins were aligned on the grass under intermittent drizzle before the ceremony began Friday. The sun emerged just as the service started, when a horse-drawn funeral caisson arrived with another coffin bearing remains of unidentified soldiers killed on the island.

After six Marines placed the 14th coffin in the middle of the row, the Marine Corps honor guard played its recessional hymn. After prayers and a 21-gun salute, the ceremony concluded with a solitary bugler’s mournful taps.

Remains of the six other Marines were returned earlier to their families for private burials.

Holtom, whose brother-in-law Gerald D. Holtom was among the 13 laid to rest, said the ceremony was “impressive.” She said it was certain to be unlike anything she will ever see again.

Holtom’s son Tom, 57, said his uncle, born and raised in Japan along with his four brothers, was a Marine intelligence officer who participated in the raid at the request of the mission commander, Lt. Col. Evans F. Carlson, because Holtom spoke fluent Japanese.

“A [Japanese] sniper saw Gerald reading a bulletin board,” Tom Holtom said, adding that other Marines told him this week that the snipers believed “the intelligence officers who spoke Japanese were more dangerous than a man with a gun.”

“They went after [Gerald Holtom] first,” Holtom said. “He was targeted.”

At Friday’s service, Kitty Jean Holtom Jones, Olive Holtom’s 61-year-old daughter, carried with her a treasured 1942 photograph taken in her parents’ Alhambra backyard. In it, she is just 2 years old, clutching the handlebars of a tricycle while her parents and grandparents look on. Also in the photograph is Gerald Holtom, who was visiting his family before departing for the Pacific. “The last time we had seen Gerald was when we took that picture with all of us,” Olive Holtom said softly.

Also at Friday’s ceremony were five siblings of the 2nd Raider Battalion’s Vernon L. Castle. Vivian Yoder of Hemet, at 78 the eldest of Castle’s surviving siblings, traveled across the country in a motor home with her husband for the event.

Richard Castle, the youngest sibling at 62, said it was particularly gratifying to hear more about the mission that took his brother’s life. “We have met people that had been on the island and taken part in the raid. It was real interesting to learn . . . exactly what took place.”

The family had to decide whether to bury Castle in their family’s hometown of Jet, Okla., or at Arlington. It was an easy call, said Elmo Castle, 73. “The men had been together that long, so they just ought to stay together,” he said.

Tom Holtom said he too felt it was important that his uncle remain with the men of his battalion. “They trained together, they fought together, they died together. They’ve been laying together in the South Pacific for half a century, [so] it’s appropriate that as many as possible be buried at Arlington.”