Charles Arvan Drew

Charles Arvan Drew was born in San Jose, California, on the second day of February, 1914. Little is known about his life before the war; his family moved to Coalinga when “Arvan” was young, and he and his brother Howard attended the local schools. Both boys graduated from Coalinga High School. According to the 1940 census, Arvan also completed four years of college – an educational achievement which might have helped him follow his father, Jesse Bird “Bert” Drew, into employment with the Standard Oil Company.

Arvan’s parents divorced in the 1930s; Jesse re-married and moved to Lemoore, while Linden and the two boys stayed in the family home at 190 Tyler Street. By the time he reached his mid twenties, Arvan was a well-known citizen in Coalinga and a member of the local Masonic Lodge.

Drew entered the Marine Corps on 11 September 1942, and completed his boot training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego. In early 1943, he was assigned to a replacement battalion headed for the Pacific, and joined up with Company F, Second Battalion, 8th Marines at their camp near Paekakariki, New Zealand. The months that followed were filled with training exercises, endurance marches, and liberties in nearby towns, where locals made the Marines feel right at home.

In late October 1943, Private Drew’s company boarded a transport ship for the most extensive amphibious exercises they’d experienced to date. They would be aboard for nearly a month, with only a brief stopover at Efate in the New Hebrides group. While at sea, the men were informed that they were taking place in an operation codenamed GALVANIC; their objective, codenamed HELEN, was a small bird-shaped island whose real name was Betio.

The amphibious assault on Betio, Tarawa atoll – Operation GALVANIC – commenced on 20 November 1943. The Second Battalion 8th Marines was given the job of assaulting the easternmost of three landing beaches – “Red 3” – and, once ashore, moving inland to quickly secure the airfield that covered much of the tiny island’s surface. A heavy and morale-boosting naval bombardment convinced many Marines that the task would be a simple one, and spirits were high at 0900 when their amphibious tractors started paddling for the beach.

The Japanese were quick to recover. Shells began bursting over the LVTs. “As the tractors neared the shore the air filled with the smoke and fragments of shells fired from 3-inch guns,” notes A Brief History of the 8th Marines. “Fortunately, casualties had been light on the way to the beach, but once the men dismounted and struggled to get beyond the beach, battle losses increased dramatically.” Most of the beach defenses were still intact, and these were supported by row after row of pillboxes, rifle pits, and machine gun nests.

Private Drew was one of seventeen Marines from 2/8 who disappeared on the first day of the battle. Exactly how they met their deaths is not known, although many likely never made it off the beach.

Arvan Drew was never seen alive again. He was initially reported as “missing in action” after the battle, but after a few months this status was changed to “killed in action” as of 20 November 1943. A memorial marker bearing his name was placed in Cemetery 33 (Plot 5, Row 1, Grave 8), but the location of his body – and the story of his final moments – remained a mystery.

When the 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company arrived on Betio to exhume the wartime dead, they discovered the true scope of the Navy’s reconstruction project. The memorial cemeteries had little or no correlation to original burial sites, so finding remains was a challenge in itself; those they did manage to find were extremely difficult to identify. After months of effort, the 604th recovered fewer than half of the bodies they hoped to find. Hundreds of men were declared permanently non-recoverable. Among those so designated was Arvan Drew.

More than seventy years passed before the next clues to Drew’s whereabouts came to light. In November 2015, archaeologists from non-profit group History Flight surveyed the former site of Betio’s East Division Cemetery. A subsequent dig unearthed a trove of artifacts and human remains left behind by the 604th QMGRC. A follow-up expedition in 2017 retrieved still more; all were handed over to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

“Individual #9” was delivered with numerous personal effects, all badly corroded and weathered: a combat knife, American and New Zealand coins, canteens, buttons, and buckles. Two items stood out: a fragment of rubberized poncho and an identification tag, both bearing the name “C A DREW.” This evidence, combined with dental and anthropology analysis, confirmed the identity of Arvan Drew. He had been buried in the East Division Cemetery as an unknown in 1943 – coincidentally, not far from his memorial marker in Cemetery 33.

Arvan Drew was returned to his family for burial in 2018.

CENOTAPHS
Honolulu Memorial, Tablets of the Missing

FINAL BURIAL
Arlington National Cemetery