Joseph Carmine Carbone

Joseph Carmine Carbone was born in Brooklyn, New York on 29 June 1923. He grew up on Gold street near the Brooklyn Navy Yard with his parents, Louie and May Carbone, and five siblings. “Joey” attended neighborhood schools, and as a young man found work at the Lavalle Shoe Company situated on Broadway.

Joseph volunteered for service in the Marine Corps on 12 December 1942. From the Manhattan recruiting office, he was sent to Parris Island for boot camp, and then all the way to California for advanced training – not as an infantryman, but in the Shoe & Textile Repair School of Camp Elliott, California. Carbone’s civilian experience suited him well: he spent just a few weeks at Elliott before deploying overseas. His first assignment, unsurprisingly, was in a shoe repair shop of the First Base Depot at Noumea.

In the fall of 1943, Private Carbone transferred from the cobbler’s shop to an infantry replacement battalion. He was assigned to the 2nd Marine Division on 6 October; nine days later, he joined King Company, Third Battalion, 2nd Marines.

In late October, Carbone and his new company boarded the USS Arthur Middleton and departed New Zealand for their next operation – the invasion of Tarawa.

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.

“On approaching the beach, the first two waves of LVTs were hit by machine gun and anti-boat gun fire from beaches Red 1 and 2 and Beach Green firing over the point,” reads an official report. “This fire damaged several LVTs and caused severe casualties. The assault waves landed generally at about 0910. The left half of Company K was partially stopped about 150 yards from the beach by anti-boat fire and suffered very heavy casualties. The remainder of Company K and Company I were also heavily hit by machine guns both in LVTs and while disembarking. The log barricade in front of Company I offered some cover and an opportunity to organize, but Company K had no cover and many of those who made the beach were hit on the flat terrain.”

Exactly what happened to Private Carbone will never be known. He was last seen alive on the approach to Beach Red One; after the battle, he was reported as missing in action. By January 1944, it was clear that he had died in action, and Joseph was declared dead as of 20 November 1943.

Because none of the remains buried on Betio after the battle could be identified as Private Carbone, a memorial marker was placed in Cemetery 33, Grave 16, Row 1, Plot 3.

The 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company exhumed the Betio cemeteries in 1946. They were perplexed and dismayed to find that “Cemetery 33” was a memorial, and after much digging in the vicinity managed to find the original burial trenches. However, the remains they found bore no correlation to the markers, and very few had any sort of identification.

One set of remains, designated “Betio X-206,” was exhumed from Cemetery 33 in March 1946. Technicians from the 604th found a key, a knife, a wristwatch, and a Catholic cross with the remains, but these items contained no clues about the man’s identity. “206” was reburied in Lone Palm Cemetery to await transport back to Hawaii.

In January 1948, “X-206” was laid out on a laboratory table in Honolulu and examined by trained anthropologists. Although they were able to complete a detailed dental chart and estimate vital statistics the identity of X-206 remained a mystery. He was buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, Plot E Grave 748.

In October 2016, on the orders of a DPAA directive, X-206 was exhumed from the “Punchbowl” and returned to the lab for analysis. Using modern identification methods – including a reexamination of dental charts, chest radiographs, and DNA matching – the remains of X-206 were positively associated with Joseph Carbone.

Carbone was officially accounted for on 21 July 2017.

CENOTAPHS
Honolulu Memorial, Tablets of the Missing

FINAL BURIAL
Calvary Cemetery, Woodside, Queens, New York