Dem
47
GOP
53
Today, a reminiscence from J.M. in Binghamton, NY:
Kenneth Montgomery was my dad's older brother, born in January of 1919. At some point after high school, Uncle Kenneth joined the Marines.
In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, there was fear of a mainland invasion by the Japanese, either in Hawaii or on the west coast. President Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted reprisals against Japan ASAP, if only to lift morale. One of the resulting actions was the formation of the Marine Raiders, a small organization specializing in amphibious landings and guerrilla tactics. The Raiders were formed to emulate British commandos.
The members of the Marine Raiders were an elite force, hand-picked, so Uncle Kenneth must have done something impressive in the Marines to distinguish himself enough to even be considered. They wanted men who were physically fit, proficient with a wide variety of weapons, and who wanted to get out there and kill some Japanese soldiers.
They had 10 weeks of training in California at what is now Camp Pendleton, specializing in hand-to-hand combat with knives. And then, on May 8, 1942, the Raiders shipped out to Hawaii. It was a 9-day journey to Pearl Harbor. They passed through Battleship Row for extra motivation.
Their mission was to take the island of Makin from the Japanese, who had been occupying it since the start of the war. The planned raid was part of a strategy to divert the Japanese forces from Guadalcanal, where a much bigger force was preparing an invasion. They were to kill whatever Japanese soldiers were there, collect whatever intelligence they could, and get a victory for morale.
On August 8, the Raiders set off from Pearl Harbor for Makin Island in two submarines. After 9 days, they reached their destination before dawn. The enemy was waiting for them. The Japanese defense positions were centered around four machine gun nests and snipers in the tops of the palm trees. By 6:30 a.m., the Japanese and Raiders had become locked in combat. The battle was without any central control and it quickly became, in the words of one of the officers, "more or less a free-for-all, with every man trying to get his score of Japs before they ran out."
Radio operators were the snipers' first order of business. They were easy targets, with their shiny antennas overhead. Four of them were hit by machine gun fire and killed immediately, including PFC Kenneth Montgomery. He was 23 years old.
On Makin that day, 19 Americans were killed, though they were listed as Missing In Action. The survivors had no way to recover the bodies of the dead, and ended up paying a few of the island natives to bury them. And there they remained.
For the Marines, recovering their dead is a sacred duty. They consider bringing every man home one of the most important obligations of Semper Fidelis.
There was an unsuccessful attempt to recover the bodies after the war in 1949. But it wasn't until 50 years later, in 1999, after some intense lobbying by Veterans organizations of the surviving Marine Raiders Association, that the search resumed.
After several months, they were lucky enough to find one of the elderly natives who had helped bury the dead Marines in 1942, when he was a teenager. Once the remains were found, "Operation Due Regard" kicked in. The remains of all 19 men were located, some still with helmets and dog tags on.
The remains were flown back to Hawaii and repatriated in a formal ceremony on December 17, 1999, at Hickam Air Force Base. The remains were identified by the Army Central Identification Laboratory using DNA and historical military records. That process took about a year. Then they methodically located the next of kin for each of the 19 soldiers. They all had the option of having their fallen family member buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
On August 17, 2001, 59 years to the day after they died, 13 Marine Raiders, including PFC Kenneth Montgomery, were buried in the ceremony at Arlington. RIP, Uncle Kenneth.
Thank you, J.M.
We have decided to do this for one more week, and then we will move on to immigration stories. (Z)