WASHINGTON –
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced today that Marine Corps Reserve Pvt. Joseph F. Boschetti, 23, of Philadelphia, killed during World War II, was accounted for on July 8, 2019.
In November 1943, Boschetti was a member of Company A, 1st Battalion, 18th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, Fleet Marine Force, which landed against stiff Japanese resistance on the small island of Betio in the Tarawa Atoll of the Gilbert Islands, in an attempt to secure the island. Over several days of intense fighting at Tarawa, approximately 1,000 Marines and Sailors were killed and more than 2,000 were wounded, while the Japanese were virtually annihilated. Boschetti died on the first day of battle, Nov. 20, 1943.
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. Pacific Fleet a platform from which to launch assaults on the Marshall and Caroline Islands to advance their Central Pacific Campaign against Japan.
In the immediate aftermath of the fighting on Tarawa, U.S. service members who died in the battle were buried in a number of battlefield cemeteries on the island. The 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company conducted remains recovery operations on Betio between 1946 and 1947, but Boschetti’s remains were not identified. All of the remains found on Tarawa were sent to the Schofield Barracks Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii for identification in 1947. By 1949, the remains that had not been identified were interred as unknowns in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu, including one set, designated as Tarawa Unknown X-020.
In 2014, History Flight, Inc., a nonprofit organization, identified Cemetery 26, where Boschetti was believed to have originally been buried, and sent recovered remains to the DPAA Laboratory for examination.
On Jan. 9, 2017, DPAA disinterred Tarawa Unknown X-020 from the Punchbowl for identification.
Scientific analysis determined that Tarawa Unknown X-020 was associated with portions recovered in 2014, and the remains were subsequently consolidated.
To identify Boschetti’s remains, scientists from DPAA used anthropological analysis, as well as circumstantial and material evidence. Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y-chromosome DNA (Y-STR) analysis.
DPAA is grateful to the Department of Veterans Affairs for their partnership in this mission. Additionally, DPAA is appreciative to History Flight, Inc., for their partnership in this mission.
Of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II, more than 400,000 died during the war. Currently there are 72,650 service members still unaccounted for from World War II, with approximately 30,000 assessed as possibly recoverable. Boschetti’s name is recorded on the Courts of the Missing at the Punchbowl, along with the others killed or lost in WWII. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.
For family information, contact the Marine Corps Service Casualty office at (800) 847-1597.
For future funeral information, visit www.dpaa.mil.
For additional information on the Defense Department’s mission to account for Americans who went missing while serving our country, visit the DPAA website at www.dpaa.mil, find us on social media at www.facebook.com/dodpaa or call (703) 699-1420/1169.
Boschetti’s personnel profile can be viewed at https://dpaa.secure.force.com/dpaaProfile?id=a0Jt0000000XggvEAC