Michael Kocopy

Michael Kocopy was born in Chester, Pennsylvania on 26 January 1923. He was the fifth of an eventual seven children born to Harry and Rose Kocopy, Galician Polish immigrants who settled in Delaware County in the early 1900s. Young Michael spent most of his young life along the Delaware River; he grew up speaking Ukranian at home, and watched his father and older brothers go off to work at a pipe mill every morning. In the 1930s, the family moved out of Chester proper and into the Gardendale neighborhood in nearby Boothwyn.

Mike developed into a good student and a popular young man; he was elected president of his Boothwyn High School class at the start of the 1940 school year. However, his future plans had little to do with school. One of the older Kocopy brothers, Walter Raymond, had served a hitch in the peacetime Army down in Panama; before reenlisting, he likely told his siblings plenty of tales of good times in uniform. In March of 1941, partway through his sophomore year, Mike Kocopy volunteered for the Marine Corps.

Eventually, four Kocopy brothers – Walter, Mike, Peter, and George – would serve in the military.

After enlisting in Philadelphia on 12 March 1941, Mike was sent to Parris Island and put through the wringer of boot camp. He excelled at the tough training and was promptly promoted to the rank of Private First Class upon graduation. Kocopy’s first duty station was the Marine Barracks at Charleston Navy Yard, and he was in South Carolina for the attack on Pearl Harbor.

PFC Kocopy spent more than a year at Charleston, standing guard over miscreants in the yard’s prison. His fortunes changed rapidly in the fall of 1942, however. Transfer orders arrived, and Kocopy was dispatched to Camp Elliott, California for a crash course in infantry training. Before the year was out, he was fighting on Guadalcanal with Easy Company, Second Battalion, 2nd Marines.

At the end of January 1943, Kocopy’s new regiment was withdrawn from the combat zone and sent to New Zealand for a period of rest and recuperation.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 for the next several months the Marines honed their marksmanship, marched hundreds of miles, attacked mock bunkers, and staged amphibious landings. On the weekends, there was the chance of a liberty call and a train to Wellington.

In October, Kocopy and his company boarded the USS Zeilin and departed New Zealand for their next operation – the invasion of Tarawa.

On 20 November 1943,  Easy Company was tasked with landing on Beach Red 2 – a heavily defended stretch of sand on Betio’s northern shore. The company came under fire as they approached the beach, and suffered extremely heavy casualties. Of 165 men who attempted to land, 62 were killed and scores more wounded.

One of those who fell in action on the first day of fighting was PFC Mike Kocopy. A gunshot wound to the head caused his death on 20 November 1943, at the age of twenty.

After the battle, Mike Kocopy was reportedly buried in the Central Division Cemetery near Red Beach 2. Casualty reports disagree over the exact location – either Row B Grave 44, or Row 3 Grave 22. In the end, though, the discrepancy did not matter. Kocopy’s original grave marker was knocked down or thrown away during the process of “beautification,” and rows of uniform white crosses went up over the memorial “Cemetery 26.”

When Kocopy’s burial ground was exhumed by Graves Registration personnel in 1947, his remains were not among those identified. A form letter was sent to his parents stating that his body could not be located, and the case was closed in 1949.

In 2014, non-profit organization History Flight conducted an archaeological dig on the site of Cemetery 26. They discovered numerous human remains, which were turned over to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency in 2015. The bones and material evidence were examined using modern identification methods – including dental analysis, chest radiography, and comparison of DNA samples.

Finally, on 27 August 2019, the remains of Michael Kocopy were officially identified. He was returned to his family, and in January 2020 was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.

CENOTAPHS
Honolulu Memorial, Tablets of the Missing

FINAL BURIAL
Arlington National Cemetery