Harry Kay Tye

Harry Tye was born in Arnoca, Kentucky on 23 June 1922. He was the middle child of three raised by Fred Clay and Sara (Lake) Tye, and spent his youth in Pike County, Kentucky, and Kanawha County, West Virginia.

Few details of Tye’s life are publicly known. He finished two years of high school and was regarded by neighbors in Gallagher, West Virginia as an upstanding young man of good intelligence and moral character – though family lore recalls him as “a bit of a hell-raiser.” In the summer of 1940, around the time of his eighteenth birthday, Tye decided to join the Marine Corps.

After obtaining his parents’ permission and the requisite recommendations from fellow citizens, Tye joined the Marines on 3 July 1940. He trained at Parris Island, and in September was assigned to his first duty station: the Naval Powder Factory at Indian Head, Maryland. That first year in the Corps was largely uneventful. Private Tye split time between the barracks at the powder factory and the Naval Proving Ground at Dahlgren, Virginia; his days consisted of standing guard over various posts and buildings, with the occasional liberty in Fredericksburg.

On one occasion, Private Tye returned from liberty facing a charge of “improper association” with a civilian. This accusation would dog him for several months, and magnified all of his other minor transgressions like absences from or unpreparedness for duty. Tye managed to earn a promotion to private first class – but subsequently lost it for sleeping on duty. In November, he spent four days absent over leave, and this was the final straw for the post commander Captain William W. Scott. Claiming that Tye’s conduct “reflected no credit to the Marine Corps,” Scott demanded the private be discharged as “undesirable.” Tye defended himself in a pointed statement, which ended “I do desire very much to stay in the Marine Corps.”

This drama played out over the last week of November and the beginning of December 1941; if not for the attack on Pearl Harbor, Captain Scott may have gotten his wish. Instead, military authorities directed that Tye remain in the service and scolded Scott to “take appropriate disciplinary action of each offense as it occurs.” The captain responded by booting Tye out of the Dahlgren detachment and down to New River, North Carolina for duty with the Fleet Marine Force.

Private Tye wound up in the 5th Marines and served briefly with How and Dog Companies. His disciplinary problems continued, and he racked up several charges for being absent over leave and breaking arrest. Each offense was followed by fines and brig time. In May, Tye was picked up in Charleston West Virginia, and charged with “straggling” from D/1/5. This final infraction earned him a court-martial at which the prospect of a bad conduct discharge was raised. Ultimately, Private Tye was released on a four-month probation with explicit instructions to stay out of trouble.


Whatever the court officer said made an impact on Private Tye. After this incident, he maintained a spotless record.

Since his former company had left for overseas duty, Tye was assigned to E/2/3rd Marines at Camp Lejeune. He crossed the country with the 3rd Marines and sailed from San Diego, California in August 1942. Instead of heading for the fighting in the Solomon Islands, the SS Lurline took Private Tye to Tutuila, Samoa, for yet more garrison duty. Another regiment, the 8th Marines, was making ready to leave for action, and Tye was one of the men chosen to fill out the ranks. On 22 September 1942, he was taken up on the rolls of Easy Company, Second Battalion, 8th Marines.

In late October, the 8th Marines sailed for the Solomon Islands and joined the battle for Guadalcanal on 4 November 1942. Unfortunately, any stories of Harry Tye’s experiences during the campaign have since been lost; the company commander rated his performance in action as “good,” and he managed to survive three months of combat without serious illness or injury.

During the spring and summer of 1943, the 8th Marines rested and re-trained in New Zealand. Like many of his fellow combat veterans, Tye spent several stretches in sick bays and field hospitals, likely the result of a tropical disease contracted on Guadalcanal. While he must have enjoyed himself on liberty in Wellington – and his probationary period was long since over – Tye was careful to stay out of trouble.

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.

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 Harry Tye. Official military records simply note that he 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. Harry Tye was one of the men buried in “Division Cemetery 3.”

Harry Tye’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.

The Tye family struggled to come to grips with their loss, and were troubled by rumors and misinformation. “A boy here who was supposed to go to Tarawha [sic] with my brother tells me this,” reads a letter from Dolores Tye. “While on the way to Tarawha, my brother had some trouble with some more boys. This boy told me that these boys then threw my brother overboard, and he could not say whether he was drowned or not.”

Harry’s mother, Sarah, believed her son was still alive somewhere. “We have got information that he was wounded, picked up, and sent to a hospital in Germany,” she wrote in 1949, “but that he was suffering from shock and did not know anything.”

Fred Tye tried to join the military, too, but was turned down for his age. He later joined the Peace Corps and spent three years in Japan, traveling frequently across the Pacific in search of his lost son. “He didn’t accept that he was dead because he didn’t have the remains,” said David Tincher. “When he came back he wasn’t the same, their relationship was never the same. My grandmother was never the same.”

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 Harry Tye.

On 6 May 2016, thanks to DNA analysis and the comparison of physical and dental characteristics, Harry Kay Tye was officially accounted for and returned to his family.

CENOTAPHS
Honolulu Memorial, Tablets of the Missing

FINAL BURIAL
Arlington National Cemetery