DES MOINES, Iowa — A Marine from Oelwein who died fighting a World War II battle on a Pacific Ocean island was scheduled to be buried Monday in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington more than 70 years after his death.
Private Wilbur Mattern, who was 23 when he died, had been unaccounted for since the 1943 battle on the small island of Betio in the Tarawa Atoll of the Gilbert Islands, located 2,400 miles southwest of Hawaii.
Mattern was assigned to Company M, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, which landed against stiff Japanese resistance on Betio, in an attempt to secure the island.
The Japanese were defeated but about 1,000 U.S. marines and sailors were killed in the battle and more than 2,000 were wounded, a Department of Defense spokeswoman said.
Mattern died on the second day of the battle, Nov. 21, 1943.
U.S. Marine Pfc. Wilbur Mattern, of Oelwein, Iowa, died Nov. 21, 1943, fighting a World War II battle on a Pacific Ocean island. Mattern is scheduled to be buried Monday, Nov. 21, 2016, in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington more than 70 years after his death.
Photo Credit: Department of Defense via AP
His nephew, James Mattern, of Sun City, Arizona, said the family had heard that Wilbur Mattern was last seen floating out to sea off the island and it was believed he was lost at sea. He said it was a surprise when the military reached out to the family a few months ago to say they found his remains in a grave on the island.
"It's like closure, finally after a long history of assuming what happened that he had washed out to sea," said James Mattern, who turns 75 next week and was just 18 months old when his uncle —his father's brother — died. Mattern, at age 2, also lost his father to war in a battle on Guam.
Mattern and his sons flew to Washington Monday to attend his uncle's burial at Arlington.
They chose Monday because it is the 73rd anniversary of his death.
"Despite the heavy casualties suffered by U.S. forces, military success in the battle of Tarawa was a huge victory for the U.S. military because the Gilbert Islands provided the U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet a platform from which to launch assaults on the Marshall and Caroline Islands to advance their Central Pacific Campaign against Japan," said Kristen Duus, a spokeswoman at the POW/MIA Accounting Agency in the Department of Defense in Arlington, Virginia.
She said those who died in the battle were buried in several cemeteries on the island and many were found and returned home for burial but Mattern was not recovered and he was declared by a military review board in 1949 as unrecoverable.
However, the nonprofit Florida-based History Flight Inc. found a burial site on Betio island in June 2015 recovering the remains of 35 U.S. Marines. Dental comparisons and other evidence helped identify Mattern's remains.
