Arnold Junior Harrison

Arnold was the only child of Arnold Guy Harrison and Matilda Rose LeVay. In November 1943, Harrison was assigned to Company B, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, 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, but the Japanese were virtually annihilated. Harrison died on the first day of the battle, Nov. 20, 1943. The battle of Tarawa was a huge victory for the U.S. military because the Gilbert Islands provided the U.S. Navy 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. In May 1946, the 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company of the American Graves Registration Services (AGRS) had recovered 532 sets of remains from burial sites across the Tarawa Atoll and interred them in Lone Palm Cemetery. The remains that could not be identified were designated as “Unknowns.” In November 1946, the U.S. Army began disinterment to bring the remains to Oahu for identification at the Central Identification Laboratory. In 1947, remains designated Unknown X-206 were sent to the Schofield Barracks Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii for analysis. When the X-206 could not be identified, they were reinterred at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.Interment with full Military Honors will be held at 11:00 a.m. March 2, 2018 at Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery.Services entrusted to Charles W. Smith & Sons Funeral Home of Sachse, Texas.