Frank Francis Penna

Francisco “Frank” Penna was born in Oneida, New York, on 21 January 1919. His parents, Michael and Clara (Bruni) Penna, were Italian immigrants who recognized the value of the region’s thick, nutrient-rich soil – the mucklands of Canastota – and raised their large family to farm onions in  the “Black Beach” of Madison County. “Mucking” was hard work with potential for profit: the Pennas owned their single-family house at 306 East Canal Street, and could afford to send some of the children to college to become librarians and teachers.

Frank was a car enthusiast with his own Buick four-door, and an aspiring boxer with enough skill to compete in the Golden Gloves. He attended Canastota High School – it is not clear whether he graduated or not – and as a young adult went to work for his father on the onion farm. Fred Penna remembered traveling to Rome with Frank and Michael, and picking up “10 and 15 boys to spend the day topping onions.” Helping run the farm was a full-time job for Frank; he was so employed when he registered for Selective Service in 1940, and when he decided to enlist in 1942.

Frank traveled to Syracuse to enlist in the Marine Corps on 16 April 1942 – “maybe to impress some girl,” remarked brother Fred – and within 48 hours, arrived at Parris Island for boot camp. Muster rolls indicate that he spent an unusually long time at Parris Island with at least three different recruit platoons – and some time with the post casual company, which may indicate that he had some health problems that periodically delayed his training. At last he earned his Marine Corps emblem and, after a brief period at the New York Navy Yard, crossed the country to join the 6th Replacement Battalion at Camp Elliott, California.

After another period of transfer and delay, Private Penna finally deployed overseas. In the spring of 1943, he arrived in New Zealand and joined Easy Company, Second Battalion, 8th Marines at Camp Paekakariki. There, he  embarked on yet another round of training – but this time the tactics were more advanced, the exercises more realistic, and his instructors combat veterans of Guadalcanal. Private Penna spent several months alternating military training with liberty in Wellington with his buddies in E/2/8.

In October 1943, 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.

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.

The Second Battalion, and then the Third Battalion, tried in vain to break through the Japanese defenses, suffering heavy casualties in every attempt. By evening, they were barely clinging to a sliver of beachhead, and the shocked survivors dug in among the bodies of the dead.

One of those who fell on the first day was Private Frank Penna.

“Frank and his Marines threw grenades at a Japanese pillbox and disabled it,” related Fred Penna in 2016. “He was wounded, but he joined his men as they continued on. That’s when he was killed. They told him not to go on, but he did.” Official military records simply note that Penna was “killed in action” by “gunshot wounds” – no further specifics of his fate are known.

It took two days for the dead men on Beach Red 3 to be buried. A long trench was bulldozed near the pier, and more than forty Marines were carried over and laid down under their ponchos. Frank Penna was one of the first men buried in “Division Cemetery 3.”

Frank Penna’s burial ground was “beautified” by Navy garrison troops in 1944 and renamed Cemetery 27. A single large cross was put up and the names of the fallen were painted on a plaque nearby. When the 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company arrived to exhume the battle casualties in 1946, however, they found not a trace of any remains beneath the monument – nor anywhere nearby. After days of searching in vain, they gave up and declared the 40 men permanently nonrecoverable.

In 2015, the non-profit group History Flight conducted an archaeological dig at a shipyard on Betio. This expedition, the result of years of research and data supplied by GPR and a cadaver dog, found the original burial trench beneath a parking lot – quite some distance from the memorial location. The remains of 46 men were recovered by History Flight – and among them were those of Frank Penna.

On 19 April 2016 – aided in part by a DNA sample from Fred Penna, the last surviving sibling – Frank Francis Penna was finally identified. He was officially accounted for on 19 June 2016 and returned to the United States for a final burial in the Penna family plot at St. Agatha’s Church, Canastota.

CENOTAPHS
Honolulu Memorial, Tablets of the Missing

FINAL BURIAL
Saint Agatha Cemetery, Canastota, New York