The family sat sombrely beside the casket watching six white-gloved pallbearers fold the Stars and Stripes in a silent, ritualistic mime. A chaplain spoke a prayer, a bugler sounded Taps and a firing party shot three times into the soft morning light.
What seemed to matter least in the ceremony at America’s Arlington National Cemetery on Tuesday was that the man being laid to rest perished 72 years ago.
Marine corporal James Otto, 20, of Los Angeles, was killed in action on the first day of intense fighting to capture the tiny Pacific island of Betio from the Japanese during the second world war. In all, about 1,000 marines were killed and more than 2,000 wounded during the battle in November 1943.
Otto’s family spent the past seven decades believing that he had been buried at sea. Then, in August this year, his closest living relative, cousin Charles Otto, 73, was informed that his remains had been found. “I thought at first someone was trying to pull my leg and get me,” he recalled. “It was hard to believe they found his remains after 72 years. They found complete skeletal remains except where he was hit in the legs.”
The remains were identified via dental records preserved since Otto enlisted to fight. He is among at least 120 Americans found on Betio Island, part of Tarawa atoll, since 2005 by the charity History Flight using methods including subsurface remote sensing. Some have been returned to the US for interment in home cemeteries or in Arlington’s 620 acres; others are still being identified. About 74,000 service members from the second world war are still unaccounted for.
Tuesday’s service, steeped in solemn pageantry on a crisp December day, emphasised continuity. It came as the seemingly incessant drumbeat of war becomes louder in the wake of the deadly attack in San Bernardino, California, with some Republican presidential candidates declaring that America is already embroiled in a new “world war”.
Charles Otto was just 19 months old when his cousin died and does not know much about him. He was told that James had been hit in the legs and returned to a hospital ship where he bled to death. Unusually for the period, his parents were unmarried. His mother died prematurely in the 1950s.
“It really hurt my aunt when she found out he’d been killed,” said Charles, a retired welder from Okmulgee, Oklahoma. “In those days they had a saying, ‘mourn yourself to death’. My dad said that’s what happened to her. The grief was too much and overwhelmed her.”
Charles served in the navy in the 1960s and can trace his family back five generations to an ancestor who fought alongside George Washington. His wife died in July this year and his two sons were unable to attend the service, but he was joined by eight family members who walked in measured steps behind a horse-drawn gun carriage bearing their relative’s flag-draped casket.
The passage of time evidently did not make Corporal James Otto any less worthy of full military honours than those killed in Afghanistan, Iraq or whatever future conflicts await. The funeral took place amid the thousands of white marble headstones that line the vividly green clipped lawns, dotted with trees and within view of the Washington monument. The cemetery is the final resting place for more than 400,000 active duty service members, veterans and their families, as well as former president John F Kennedy and family.
Thirty-four marines stood to attention, holding flags or rifles. Beneath a bare willow oak tree, six pallbearers in black jackets, blue trousers and white caps lifted the casket from a hearse and placed it on the gun carriage, while a brass band played the ever evocative Abide With Me.
The procession then moved through the cemetery to a slow drumbeat, placing a comforting hand on the shoulder of their youngest member, nine-year-old Max. They took seats beside the casket, and a marine corps wreath, where chaplain Mark Tanis said a prayer and told them: “James Otto laid down his life for our sake, for his friends, for his fellow marines … We thought he was buried at sea but he ended up on Tarawa [atoll].”
Tanis described it as an honour to be with the fallen marine’s family. “Some of you are long-lost family. Some of you were just babies when he fought and died on the Pacific.”
The national flag was carefully, elaborately folded and handed to Charles by an officer, his chest full of medals, who spoke quiet words of gratitude and condolence. The casket was not buried there and then; it must await a headstone in three months’ time.
Speaking immediately afterwards, Charles seemed about to yield to emotion, just for a moment, but quickly composed himself. “It was a great experience,” he said. “I’m so proud the marines had a very good service.
“It’s been kind of mind-boggling, all of this, but it happened a long time ago. We didn’t really know him but we’re proud. The marine code is no man left behind, and we brought him home.”
