Francis Eugene Drake, Jr.

While working on an outside kitchen for a building on Skyline Ridge, Honiara resident Mr. Yorick Tokuru uncovered “possible osseous remains” – in the form of a partial human skeleton. The remains changed hands several times, from the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force to a local archaeologist, then to historian John Innes, who contacted JPAC to take possession of the remains.

Almost seventy years to the day after Puller’s 1/7^th Marines fought across the ridges west of the Matanikau, Radio Australia broke the news that suspected American remains had been found in Honiara. Michael Tokuru Junior was working on the very same kitchen when he unearthed more bones, and an American identification tag inscribed “F. E. Drake, Jr. 299871 USMC.” Ewan Stevenson got word to JPAC, and an excavation of the site revealed a third set of remains.

In the four years that followed, JPAC was disbanded and the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) took its place. Drake’s remains were identified in April 2016; he was officially deemed “accounted for on 28 August 2017 along with PFC Harry C. Morrissey.

On 28 May 2018, Francis Drake was buried in Massachusetts Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Agawam, Massachusetts. Harry Morrissey was buried in Arlington in the fall of 2020.

(The third individual, who may be Albert L. Bernes, is still officially unidentified.)

CENOTAPHS
Manila American Cemetery and Memorial

FINAL BURIAL
Massachusetts Veterans Memorial Cemetery