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Amorea Frank Honors U.S History II 10/23/13 http://www.lodinews.com/ap/nation/article_353c8c5c-3bdf-11e3-837c-10604b9f0ff8.html In September 1943, Tech. Sgt. Harry Arnold Carlsen wrote a letter to his mother and ailing father in suburban Chicago. The Marine told his parents he wouldn’t be home for Christmas but was hopeful he’d visit them the next year. About two months after writing to his parents for the final time, the 31-year-old died in a battle with Japanese forces on a Pacific atoll called Tarawa, part of the present-day nation of Kiribati. On Nov. 20, 1943, Carlsen was fatally shot in the head as U.S. forces stormed the atoll. In addition to the 1,100 or so Americans who died in the battle, more than 3,000 Japanese lost their lives. In west suburban Brookfield, where Carlsen grew up, the news arrived in a grim telegram sent two days before Christmas. At Tarawa alone, where more than 1,100 U.S. troops died, upward of 500 service members were never found. Another 90 or so sets of remains still haven’t been identified. Carlson’s grand-nephew, Ed Spellman, has pushed without success to have the government exhume X-82’s grave and test the DNA against a sample submitted by the Marine’s family. He has been discouraged as bureaucrat after bureaucrat politely noted his request without seeming to act on it. Other families of missing Chicago-area Marines share similar frustrations.
This article relates to what we learned in class because it gives a briefs description of a young soldier who fought in the military (Marine Corps Reserve) days after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. This solider is among tens of thousands of Americans who fought in World War II whose remains have never been identified. It’s sad that these soldiers, these heroes, are not recognized to this day for something that helped change our world today. The Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command is one of the federal agencies charged with finding and identifying Americans killed in past conflicts. Lee Tucker, a spokesman for the agency, said officials are working hard to identify the Tarawa Marines and Americans from other conflicts, but he declined to discuss specific cases because “we don’t want to potentially raise false hope from family members.” Agency officials say they are doing the best they can amid challenges from technology, complicated search locations, foreign governments, finite resources and the passage of decades. I believe they could have done a bit more work to identify these soldiers so the family can finally find closure.
This article relates to what we learned in class because it gives a briefs description of a young soldier who fought in the military (Marine Corps Reserve) days after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. This solider is among tens of thousands of Americans who fought in World War II whose remains have never been identified. It’s sad that these soldiers, these heroes, are not recognized to this day for something that helped change our world today. The Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command is one of the federal agencies charged with finding and identifying Americans killed in past conflicts. Lee Tucker, a spokesman for the agency, said officials are working hard to identify the Tarawa Marines and Americans from other conflicts, but he declined to discuss specific cases because “we don’t want to potentially raise false hope from family members.” Agency officials say they are doing the best they can amid challenges from technology, complicated search locations, foreign governments, finite resources and the passage of decades. I believe they could have done a bit more work to identify these soldiers so the family can finally find closure.
