Operation GALVANIC – the 1943 invasion of the Gilbert Islands – cost the lives of more than a thousand American servicemen, mostly Marines who fell in the amphibious assault of Betio. Smaller combat operations, aviation accidents, and occupation duty added more deaths to the grim toll. Those not buried or lost at sea found a resting place in an island cemetery. They were not supposed to stay there forever, yet some have never returned home. An aggressive program of “beautification and reconstruction” by the Navy garrison force replaced original markers with memorials and erased all trace of the battlefield burials. The result was attractive, efficient, and an utter disaster when exhumation teams arrived to collect the dead after the war.
The map below, dated March 1944, shows the location of all “beautified” cemeteries on Betio according to the Navy numbering system. Some were individual markers standing alone amid broken trees and troop tents; others were massive wooden crosses silhouetted against the sea. Still others were massive memorials with hundreds of white-painted markers and manicured paths. Some were placed atop real burial grounds, others simply nearby, and a few seemingly at random. Two mass graves went entirely unmarked.
Click on a map marker to learn more about each cemetery – from particular history to rosters of men buried in or recovered from specific locations. This diagram also includes three sites not noted on the original document: the Coastwatcher’s Memorial along Black Beach, “Row D” (not beautified; discovered in 2019) and “Cemetery C” (not beautified and currently “lost”).
Lone Palm (Betio)
1946 Consolidation
Other Atoll Island Cemeteries
Buariki (Sarah)
Buota (Ella)
Abaiang (Diana)
