Reported Burials
1943
Remains Recovered
1946
Unidentified Remains
2021
Unaccounted For
2021
A four-cross grave located offshore of Black Beach. Within its palm-log borders, Cemetery 37 commemorated:
PFC Frank Hein (C/1/2nd Marines)
PFC Frank Emery Childress (M/3/8th Marines) – as “Unknown”
Private William Floyd Blevins (C/1/2nd Marines)
PFC Donald Edwin Ward (B/1/18th Marines)
Correspondent Robert Sherrod accompanied Generals Julian Smith and Holland M. Smith on a walking tour of the battlefield which took them on a loop from Division Headquarters to Black Beach, Green Beach, and finally Red One and Two. He recalled the journey in Tarawa: The Story Of A Battle.
The first three dead men the generals see are Marines; one near a disabled Jap tank on the edge of the runway, two more in a shellhole not far away. Fifty yards before they reach the south shore, after crossing the runway, they find the hastily scooped graves of three more Marines. I note the casualty tag on one grave: “W. F. Blevins, Killed In Action, 11-22-43.”
Given its location on Betio’s southern shore, this is a somewhat unusual gathering of graves. The area was not under American control until 22 November 1943: this is the date when Hein and Blevins were killed, and their company was operating in this area in support of the 6th Marines. However, Childress and Ward were both reported KIA on 20 November, when the American lines were farther to the north. How they happened to be buried here is not known.
Marine Corps records are similarly confusing. Hein and Blevins were reported as buried “in the field on Beach Green”; Blevins’ personnel files include references to Cemetery 37, Cemetery 38, and “Grid Location KH 213085.” Childress, whose grave is marked Unknown, also has specific coordinates: “Isolated Grave KH 213085.” Ward’s company simply noted that he was “buried at Betio Island.” And PFC Bert Mason Berg, whose lone memorial marker stood in Cemetery 41, also shares the coordinates 213085.
Nor does the mystery end with the initial burial. The 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company located Cemetery 37 in April 1946, but recovered only three remains – Childress (as Betio X-207), Blevins, and Ward. Aside from Childress, whose case was resolved in 1947, no Betio X-files are associated with Cemetery 37. The unfortunate truth may be that Cemetery 37 only ever contained the three graves seen by Sherrod – meaning Frank Hein was never buried there at all.
The three recovered Marines were reinterred in Lone Palm Cemetery.
