Andrew Pellerito
Corporal Andrew Pellerito served with King Company, Third Battalion, 2nd Marines.
He was killed in action at the battle of Tarawa on 20 November 1943.
Branch
Marine Corps Regular
Service Number 355031
Current Status
Accounted For
as of 19 August 2021
Recovery Organization
Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency
and
History Flight 2014 Expedition
More Information
History
Andrew Pellerito was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan on 1 June 1921. He was the son of Sicilian immigrants Salvatore “Sam” and Rosalia “Rosa” Pellerito, and grew up in a large family that eventually included eleven children.
Andrew spent most of his life in Grand Rapids, and graduated from South High School. A devout Catholic, he was a member of the Holy Names Society at Our Lady of Sorrows. In the years before the war, Pellerito worked as a laborer for construction jobs.
Andrew joined the Marine Corps at Detroit on 15 January 1942, and after completing boot camp at MCRD San Diego was assigned to King Company, Third Battalion, 2nd Marines. He trained with “K/3/2” in California for several months before deploying overseas. He specialized as a light machine gunner with the company weapons platoon.
Private Pellerito fought in the Guadalcanal campaign, and earned a battlefield promotion to Private First Class on 1 January 1943. At the end of that month, his regiment was withdrawn from the combat zone and sent to New Zealand for a period of rest and recuperation.
Training recommenced in the spring of 1943, and by the summer Pellerito was deemed ready for promotion. He was advanced in rank to corporal on 1 July 1943, and was probably placed in charge of a machine gun squad.
In October, Pellerito and his company boarded the USS Arthur Middleton and departed New Zealand for their next operation – the invasion of Tarawa.
On 20 November 1943, the Third Battalion 2nd Marines was assigned the task of spearheading the assault on Betio’s Red Beach One. They were subjected to devastating fire from the moment they crossed the island’s coral reef, and suffered heavy casualties while coming ashore and on the beach itself.
“On approaching the beach, the first two waves of LVTs were hit by machine gun and anti-boat gun fire from beaches Red 1 and 2 and Beach Green firing over the point,” reads an official report. “This fire damaged several LVTs and caused severe casualties. The assault waves landed generally at about 0910. The left half of Company K was partially stopped about 150 yards from the beach by anti-boat fire and suffered very heavy casualties. The remainder of Company K and Company I were also heavily hit by machine guns both in LVTs and while disembarking. The log barricade in front of Company I offered some cover and an opportunity to organize, but Company K had no cover and many of those who made the beach were hit on the flat terrain.”
One of those who fell in action on the first day of fighting was Corporal Andrew Pellerito. A casualty report stated that a gunshot wound of the head caused his death on 20 November 1943, at the age of twenty two.
After the battle, Corporal Pellerito was reportedly buried in the East Division Cemetery, Row B, Grave #43 alongside many of his buddies from 3/2nd Marines.
When Corporal Pellerito’s burial ground (re-designated as Cemetery 33) was exhumed by Graves Registration personnel in 1947, his remains were not among those identified. Nor could the technicians at the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii provide any further clues. He was declared non-recoverable in 1949.
In 2014, non-profit organization History Flight conducted archaeological digs at the site of the former East Division Cemetery. They located numerous human remains and material evidence, which was then unilaterally handed over to the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC).
In 2016, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), successor to the defunct JPAC, ordered the exhumation of unknown remains buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
Decades later, a DPAA directive led to the exhumation of unidentified remains in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. Using modern identification methods, some of the remains found by the 2014 History Flight expedition were combined with “Betio X-118” – an individual once buried in the East Division Cemetery.
On 19 August 2021, X-118 was officially identified as Corporal Andrew Pellerito.
Decorations
Purple Heart
For wounds resulting in his death, 20 November 1943.
Next Of Kin Address
Address of father, Mr. Sam Pellerito.
Location Of Loss
Corporal Pellerito’s battalion landed and fought at Betio’s Beach Red One.
Thank for your efforts to find Andrew. My father, himself a WWII veteran, kept Andrew’s obit displayed in an organizer on his desk until his own death in 2004. Finding that I embarked on reading and researching what happened on Tarawa. It was the first of many D-Days in the Pacific and what the Marines and Navy learned from Tarawa helped them in subsequent operations. But at such a cost! God bless you brave men and may you rest in peace.