ARLINGTON, Va.\u00a0\u2014 After 72 years buried under feet of crushed coral in an old shipyard, Pvt. Robert Carter is finally home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Pentagon long considered the remains of the Marine unrecoverable, lost in the heat, the chaos and the fog of battle during World War II in the Central Pacific.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Carter had brothers in arms who refused to give up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Marines who survived the Battle of Tarawa in November\u00a01943\u00a0called the atoll near the equator a “square mile of hell.” Carter was killed on Day One.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A Japanese commander bragged it would take a million men 100 years to capture Tarawa. The Marines took it in three days \u2014 but at a cost of 1,200 men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Carter \u2014 just 18 years old and less than a year in the service \u2014 was likely killed by an artillery shell to his landing craft or while wading ashore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I remember him picking me up out of the snow playing with me when he was home on leave. I do remember that,” his sister, Joan Marie Nusbaum, said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She is 78 now. She was just five years old when her brother died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I think Marines came to our door and told mom and dad he was gone,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For seven decades, Carter’s body was lost, buried along with hundreds of other Marines in trenches, some even under pig sties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
But last year, History Flight, a charity dedicated to bringing home the missing, found Carter and 34 other Marines buried in a long row near Red Beach One.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I wouldn’t want to be left behind. I wouldn’t want my buddies to be left behind,” said John Frye of History Flight, a retired Green Beret medic who helped recover the men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Carter’s parents\u00a0didn’t live to see his homecoming. Four of his brothers and sisters have already passed away. But Joan Marie Nusbaum flew out from Oregon to watch as he was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under a stifling sun, she wiped away a tear for the brother she barely knew: “Now we know he’s at rest.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are still some 500 missing Marines on Tarawa. Five hundred\u00a0families still looking for answers. Five hundred families \u2014 as Carter’s sister put it \u2014 who still don’t know for sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
History Flight just recovered several more sets of remains. The Defense Department is now working to positively identify them and return them home, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Marines who survived the Battle of Tarawa in November 1943 called the atoll near the equator a “square mile of hell.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":33359,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":19,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2763],"class_list":["post-26376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-veterans"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"33T7JZP7CNBIJBB63QC5V5Q54I","arc_canonical_url":"\/veterans\/2016\/07\/15\/a-lost-marine-of-tarawa-finally-comes-home\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n