Plans have been announced for the repatriation of an Emporia soldier’s remains after his identity was recently confirmed nearly eight decades after he was killed in action during World War II
The remains of Marine Corps Private Glenn White will be flown to Kansas City International, with the plane landing at 12:16 pm Friday, Sept. 17. There will be a motorcycle escort taking White’s remains to Roberts-Blue-Barnett. On Sept. 18, a military and police escort will go to Memorial Lawn Cemetery, where White’s remains will be buried. The escort will leave the funeral home at 10:30 am, with the service — including a missing man flyover formation and military honors from the Marine Corps — beginning at 11 am.
White was part of Company A, First Battalion, Sixth Marine Regiment, Second Marine Division, Fleet Marine Force, that landed in the Gilbert Islands in November 1943 and encountered intense resistance from the Japanese. The battle on the Tarawa Atoll lasted four days, with White killed on the third day and subsequently buried in what now is called Cemetery 33. He posthumously received the Silver Star for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity.”
Following the war, the US government centralized all the American remains found on Tarawa at one cemetery for later repatriation, but almost half the known casualties were never found and no recovered remains were linked to White. A nonprofit organization discovered a site believed to be Cemetery 33 in 2009, and excavations of Row D — where White was initially listed as buried — began in 2019. White’s remains were confirmed using dental and anthropological analysis, circumstantial and material evidence, mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome DNA analysis.