John Frederick Prince

John Prince – known to everyone as “Jack” – was born in New York City on 13 September 1924, and grew up in Nassau County with his parents Frederick and Margaret, and older brother Richard. He was an athletic youth, especially fond of baseball and hockey, and was a well-liked student at Public School 33. “Jack was good looking, good at sports, good-natured and smart!” recalled Ned Hudson, a buddy from Bellerose. The young ladies of Bellerose thought so, too; Grace Wharry, in particular, was particularly “sweet on” Jack.

In 1942, Jack finished his studies at Jamaica High School – while he was not featured in the yearbook, contemporary newspaper accounts claim he graduated that year – and “couldn’t wait to get into the Marines, his boyhood dream.”

Jack joined up on 21 November 1942, and within a few days was on his way to Parris Island for boot camp. From there, he was sent to New River, North Carolina for duty with the “Second Separate Battalion, Reinforced” – a short-lived experimental unit intended to act as an independent commando-style organization. The concept was abandoned in spring of 1943, and Jack’s company reorganized into Easy Company, Second Battalion, 24th Marines.

Private Prince crossed the country with E/2/24 and underwent field training with them at Camp Pendleton for several months. He was one of several dozen men from the ranks of the 24th and sent for a crash course of infantry school at Camp Elliott. Prince shipped out from California in the early fall of 1943; he arrived in New Zealand and joined Fox Company, Second Battalion, 8th Marines on 10 October 1943.


Just a few days later, 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.

Jack Prince lived his boyhood dream for almost exactly one year. He fell on the first day of the battle, 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. Jack Prince was one of the men buried here in “Division Cemetery 3.”

Prince’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. (Jack also had an individual marker in Cemetery 33, Plot 1, Row 2, Grave 3.)

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 turned over to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency for forensic analysis.

Laboratory work including dental and anthropological analysis, plus chest radiograph comparisons, solved the mystery. The original records were accurate: Jack Princehad been buried in the trench near the beach where he died. Among his personal effects was a sterling silver identification bracelet engraved with his name on the front – and “I L Y GRACE” on the back.

Jack Prince was officially identified on 20 November 2015, and accounted for on 2 April 2016. That summer, he was returned to his family for burial in Long Island.

Read the story of Jack Prince’s funeral: When Jack Came Home

CENOTAPHS
Honolulu Memorial, Tablets of the Missing

FINAL BURIAL
Calverton National Cemetery