This cemetery consisted of a single marker for “J. B. Morris.” Sergeant Jerome Bernard Morris, an NCO serving with Company B, First Battalion, 6th Marines, was killed in action on 22 November 1943 by shrapnel wounds in the chest.
Marine Corps documentation reports that Sergeant Morris was buried in “Row D“ – a sizable trench grave dug on 23 November – alongside 41 other men. Specifically, Morris was the seventh man in the row. This mass grave was located in the vicinity of the East Division Cemetery (Cemetery 33), and was referred to as the “fourth row” of that cemetery – although this was somewhat misleading, as the original East Divison Cemetery only ever had three rows within its boundaries. At some point in 1944, “Row D” was obliterated and no memorial was raised in its place.
In 2019, “Row D” was discovered by archaeologists from History Flight. Sergeant Morris was identified from remains found in that excavation, and he was officially accounted for on 27 September 2019.
Since Morris was really in “Row D,” the identity of the individual buried under this marker is not known. If the 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company did recover remains from this location, they belonged to someone else: no current Betio X-file is associated with Cemetery 35.
