William Franklin Cavin

William Cavin – known as “Frank” to friends and family – was born in Hancock County, Tennessee, on 4 December 1924.  He never knew his mother; Mae Edds Cavin died in January 1925, leaving Oscar Fredrick Cavin with infant Frank and two older girls to raise. Consequently, Frank spent much of his childhood living with his grandparents, Henry “Tip” and Julia Cavin. (His father remarried and relocated to Southampton County; Frank eventually counted five half-siblings, but it is not clear if they maintained a close relationship.)

Frank’s youth was spent in the hilly rural region between Sneedville, Tennessee and Ewing, Virginia. He grew up on the Cavin farm with his grandparents and older cousins, and attended Hancock County High School for at least two years.

On 5 August 1941, Frank Cavin appeared at a recruiting station in Charleston, West Virginia, and declared that he wanted to join the Marine Corps. Earlier that year, the Corps announced that seventeen-year-olds were permitted to enlist – so Frank quietly added a year to his age. (His military paperwork reflects this white lie; Frank’s date of birth is given as 4 December 1923.) He claimed his grandfather as his next of kin, and Ewing as his place of residence.

After completing boot camp at Parris Island, Private Cavin was selected for Sea School – a prestigious assignment that might lead to duty with the Marine detachment aboard a capital ship. Unfortunately, this did not pan out for Cavin; from Portsmouth, Virginia he was sent to Portsmouth, New Hampshire for barracks duty with the Navy Yard. He was there for the attack on Pearl Harbor, and would spend the first months of the war on guard duty.

In October 1942, Cavin was reassigned from Portsmouth to the Sixth Replacement Battalion at Camp Elliott, California. He sailed from San Diego and, after several months of shuffling between various replacement outfits, arrived at Camp Paekakariki in New Zealand. There, PFC Cavin joined Fox Company, Second Battalion, 8th Marines – the unit that would be his home for the rest of his life. He embarked on yet another round of training. This time, however, the tactics were more advanced, the exercises more realistic, and his instructors combat veterans of Guadalcanal.

In October 1943, 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.

One of those who fell was Frank Cavin – just minutes or hours into his first battle. Blast injuries took his life, and “he passed calmly and very quietly,” according to a condolence letter from a fellow Marine. “His was not only a great loss to his family but to us also.”

Marine Corps Graves Registration reported that Frank Cavin was buried in “Grave B, #11, East Division Cemetery, Tarawa Atoll.” This graveyard – the largest on Betio – consisted of three rows of rough crosses laid out beside the airstrip. In 1944, however, the Navy garrison embarked on a program to “beautify” the Betio cemeteries and align them with necessary construction. The original markers were torn down, and a large memorial – Cemetery 33 – built in their place. A new white cross with Cavin’s name was placed here (in Plot 5, Row 1, Grave 13) but bore no relation to the spot where his remains were really buried.

The 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company arrived at Betio in 1946 and set to work exhuming the memorial cemeteries built on top of the original burial grounds. Identification of remains was a serious challenge, and hundreds of men were declared non-recoverable in 1949. Among them was PFC William Cavin.

Remains that were recovered but not identified were buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. In March 2017,  a DPAA directive ordered renewed efforts to discover their names. “Betio Unknown X-32” was exhumed from Section E, Grave 412 and sent to a forensic laboratory for analysis. “X-32” was a partial skeleton; through careful comparison, technicians were able to associate some remains recovered from Betio by non-profit organization History Flight in 2013.

A combination of modern forensic efforts – including mtDNA analysis, comparison of chest radiographs, and additional dental and anthropological clues – finally led to the identification of X-32 as William Franklin Cavin. He was officially accounted for on 23 April 2018 and returned to his family for burial.

CENOTAPHS
Honolulu Memorial, Tablets of the Missing

FINAL BURIAL
Overton Cemetery, Hancock County, Tennessee