Donald Ross Tolson

Donald Tolson was born on 18 August 1923, the youngest of three boys raised by Ora and Roxy Ann Mabel (McKay) Tolson of Kansas City, Missouri. He spent most of his childhood in Grundy County, and attended Laredo public schools along with his older brothers Chester and John. The boys would occasionally see newspaper items about their cousins, Hillory and Clyde Tolson, who were making names for themselves in government service and the FBI.

The Tolsons moved to California in the mid-1930s and settled in Bakersfield. Their first years there were marked by tragedy, as John Ferrell Tolson died in 1938 at the age of twenty two. While still mourning the loss of his brother, Donald enrolled at Kern County Union High School. He discovered the Cadet Corps and was soon deeply involved in a schedule of “drill work, rifle practice, a certain amount of military theory, as well as practice in both giving and taking orders.” When he graduated in 1941, “Blackie” Tolson was a Corps officer with a number of ribbons and medals to wear on his cadet uniform.

Tolson turned eighteen in the summer of 1941 – and one month later, he joined the Marines.

After enlisting at San Diego on 20 September 1941, Tolson was sent straight to the base Recruit Depot for instruction. His practice in the Cadets served him well; Private Tolson qualified as a rifle sharpshooter, pistol marksman, and bayonet expert at MCRD San Diego and proudly displayed his silver badges while on boot leave over Thanksgiving.

A week later, the United States was at war. Private Tolson hurried back to San Diego, and on 1 January 1942 joined Fox Company, Second Battalion, 8th Marines at Camp Elliott. Four days later, he was boarding the transport Matsonia and sailing out across the Pacific, bound for Tutuila, American Samoa. Tolson would spend several months on garrison duty, preparing to repel an expected Japanese attack that never came.

In late October 1942, the 8th Marines sailed for the Solomon Islands and joined the battle for Guadalcanal on 4 November 1942. Unfortunately, any stories of Tolson’s experiences during the campaign have since been lost; he managed to survive nearly three months of combat without serious illness or injury, and in February 1943 sailed for New Zealand.

During the spring and summer of 1943, the 8th Marines rested and re-trained at Camp Paekakariki outside of Wellington. Despite his youth, Private Tolson was a combat veteran and could command the respect of new Marines joining the company from the States. When he wasn’t in camp or in training, Tolson was likely enjoying the sights and scenes of Wellington on liberty. He also enjoyed the prestige of newfound rank – even the modest advancement to Private First Class. Occasional spells in sick bay might indicate the effects of a recurring tropical disease picked up in the Solomons.

That October – almost exactly a year since they departed Samoa for Guadalcanal – the 8th Marines boarded transports at Wellington for a final round of training exercises. When the ships headed out to sea instead of returning to town, the Marines aboard began to realize that the rumors were true: they were bound for combat once again.

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.

PFC Tolson 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.

Blackie Tolson 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 2, Row 1, Grave 10), 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 Donald Tolson.

More than seventy years passed before the next clues to Tolson’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.

DPAA scientists used dental, anthropological and chest radiograph comparison analysis, as well as circumstantial and material evidence, in their attempts to identify the remains. One set solved the decades-long mystery of what became of Donald Tolson. He had been buried in the East Division Cemetery as an unknown in 1943 – coincidentally, not far from his memorial marker in Cemetery 33.

Tolson was officially identified on 18 September 2017, and returned to his family for burial in February 2018.

CENOTAPHS
Honolulu Memorial, Tablets of the Missing

FINAL BURIAL
Mount Moirah Cemetery, Kansas City, Missouri