At long last, a Medal of Honor recipient will soon be able to be laid to rest in the soil he fought and died to protect.
Marine 1st Lt. Alexander Bonnyman Jr. is one of 3,491 Medal of Honor recipients during the long prestigious history of the medal, and one of 472 recipients from World War II.
Killed during the Battle of Tarawa in 1943, Bonnyman and approximately 1,100 of his fellow Marines fell at the hands of the Japanese in the Pacific Theater.
The terrain of the atoll and the speed at which men were buried during the campaign made locating the bodies of soldiers just like Bonnyman next to impossible.
Using modern technology like ground-penetrating radar and aerial drones, the non-profit group History Flight, led by commercial pilot Mark Noah, helped recover the burial locations of U.S. soldiers who were killed on Tarawa.
Noah said that finding the various grave sites on the island "is not unlike trying to find a sunken ship in the ocean."
The Sante Fe New Mexican describes Bonnyman's service from his Medal of Honor citation:
Bonnyman entered the Marines as a private and was promoted to 1st lieutenant after he fought in the final stages of the Guadalcanal Campaign. When his battalion landed on the Tarawa atoll on Nov. 20, 1943, they encountered some 5,000 Japanese soldiers dug into heavily armed fortifications. The Japanese guarded a strategically important airstrip on one square mile of sand.
Over the course of three days, Bonnyman organized and led demolition teams against the Japanese installations, including a drawn-out assault on a bomb-proof shelter where an estimated 150 enemy soldiers were embedded.
As the Marines at last succeeded in flushing out of the occupants, a Japanese soldier shot and killed Bonnyman. The Marines secured the island at the end of that day.
The island would soon be transformed from a battle site into an airstrip for the Allied troops to move across the Pacific towards Japan. That transition hindered the preservation of the grave markers, so the U.S. Military lost track of where individuals were buried.
Bonnyman's grandson, Clay Bonnyman Evans spoke with The Sante Fe New Mexican about his grandfather, and what the search for 1st Lt. Bonnyman's body has meant to him and his family.
“I was really overwhelmed,” Evans said. “His physical remains matched what we would expect. We were very confident it was him, and we do now have a legal dental match completed.”
"It was tragic for [Bonnyman's parents]. They tried so hard to bring their son back, and it was just a disappointment over and over again. They died without knowing where he was,” Evans continued.
Bonnyman's youngest daughter, Alexandra "Alix" Trejean, who was born shortly before her father died in the Pacific Theater, said that the 1st. Lt. will be bury him in a family plot in Eastern Tennessee.
“When we inter him in Knoxville, the whole family will be together.”