Jack Junior Fox

Jack Junior Fox was born at Women’s Hospital (now McLaren Flint) on 26 April 1920. His parents, John George Fox and Helen Hinds Fox, were no strangers to hospital wards: John, a Great War veteran, had served as a medic with the 338th Infantry in France, while Helen was a professional nurse. Jack was their first son – a second boy, William, was born in 1922 – but their joy was short-lived, as Helen tragically died the following year. John remarried, and the two Fox boys were partly raised by their stepmother Bessie in Flint, and their paternal grandmother Emily McNeil up in Alpena.

Jack was a popular and well-regarded young man in Flint: “smart, quick & fearless” according to one acquaintance; “very ambitious, pleasing personality, and gets along well with other people,” said another. He attended school through the eleventh grade, and served two six-month hitches in the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1938 and 1940. Following his honorable discharge from “the Cs” Jack returned to Flint and took a job with the AC Spark Plug Company, earning the respectable wage of $45 per week.

Jack volunteered for the Marine Corps on 26 November 1942, and completed boot training at MCRD San Diego in early 1943. He was then assigned to a replacement draft and deployed overseas to New Zealand, joining the 2nd Marine Division in April 1943. Private Fox wound up in the ranks of Love Company, Third Battalion, 2nd Marines (L/3/2), a veteran unit that had participated in the Solomon Islands campaign.

Jack spent the remaining spring and summer months training with his new company and preparing for their next operation. He received a promotion to Private First Class during this time.

In October 1943, Fox and his buddies boarded a transport ship and sailed from New Zealand – bound for Operation GALVANIC in the Gilbert Islands.

On 20 November 1943, the Third Battalion 2nd Marines was assigned the task of spearheading the assault on Betio’s Red Beach One. They were subjected to devastating fire from the moment they crossed the island’s coral reef, and suffered heavy casualties while coming ashore and on the beach itself.

PFC Fox and L/3/2 landed as a reserve wave behind Item and King Companies, but also suffered catastrophic losses and managed to come in “slowly and very disorganized… driblets” as men made their way to shore as best they could. “There were thousands of us walking waist deep in water, over coral, while being fired on point blank from shore,” said L/3/2 veteran Angelo Pace. “Buddies were dropping in front and all around me.” Twenty-six Love Company men were killed on 20 November alone.

Jack Fox managed to survive the initial landings and a second day ashore. He ultimately lost his life on 22 November – D-plus-2 – as efforts to consolidate the Marine lines continued. The exact circumstances of his death are a mystery; even his unit muster roll noted “cause unknown.” And, while he was confirmed as killed in action, nobody from his organization knew where exactly Jack was buried.

Navy garrison troops eventually placed a memorial marker in the “beautified” Cemetery 33, Grave 2, Row 1, Plot 16.

The full truth of Jack’s remains would not be learned until 2017, when he was associated with “Betio X-117,” an unknown Marine buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific since 1949.

After the battle, a burial party collected Jack’s body and brought him to the East Division Cemetery for interment. He could not be identified at the time, and thus was one of several unknown men buried in the island’s largest cemetery. This was later renamed “Cemetery 33” – so ironically, Jack’s memorial marker may not have been far from his real burial place.

When Graves Registration troops arrived after the war, they could not find any further clues about his identity. Nor could trained anthropologists at the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii. “Betio X-117” was thus interred in the “Punchbowl” Section E, Grave 843.

These remains were exhumed in 2016 as part of a DPAA initiative, and reexamined using modern identification methods. Jack Fox was finally identified on 21 March 2017.

As of 2021, final disposition and burial of his remains is still pending.

CENOTAPHS
Honolulu Memorial, Tablets of the Missing


Final burial pending wishes of next of kin.