Tag Archives: tarawa

Tarawa Marines Repatriated 70 Years Later

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser (repeated at the Stars and Stripes) covered the repatriation of the remains of 36 US Marines from Tarawa’s Betio Island, where they fell in battle more than 70 years ago:

History Flight Inc., a Florida nonprofit that has searched Tarawa for more than five years, announced in June its discovery of a burial trench on Tarawa’s Betio Island, a sandy grave of at least 36 Marines killed Nov. 20-23, 1943…

The flag-draped caskets Read more

Camp Pendleton Cross Prompts Wider Review

The demand by Jason Torpy, speaking for the one-man Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, that the US Marine Corps remove its “Christian privilege” (the crosses on Camp Pendleton‘s ridge on Camp Horno) has spurred a “wider review” of similar memorials around the world:

Capt. Greg Wolf at the Pentagon headquarters of the Marine Corps said Thursday that an “operational planning team” is conducting Read more

Memorial Crosses as US Military Tradition

Some in American society today seem to think resurgent zealots are trying to push Christianity on society through their use of crosses, even within the US military.

Facts, however, show the long tradition of use of crosses as military memorials.

THIS SIMPLE CROSS WAS ERECTED at the western tip of Betio as a monument in memory of the 2nd Division Marines who were killed in the battle for Tarawa.

Crosses have been raised on Read more