SAN MATEO — A U.S. Marine has come to his final resting place decades after gunfire cut him down as he was defending this nation thousands of miles from home.
Howard Miller died during the grueling island-hopping campaign across the Pacific in World War II, as American soldiers, sailors and airmen tried to get within striking distance of Japan.
Back then, his comrades lowered the 22-year-old private first class into an unmarked grave on Betio, a little-known island that’s part of the Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands.
“My mom told me that her mother, my grandmother, ran out of the house hysterical when she heard that her son was dead,” said Barry Rush, Miller’s nephew. “My mother was trying to console her. My mom was about 12 years old.”
Miller’s remains, long lost, were found and identified in April, then flown back to the U.S.
Workers wearing yellow safety vests stood on the tarmac and passengers waiting to board vacation flights watched through windows at San Francisco International Airport as the Marine’s flag-draped casket emerged from the cargo deck of United Americans Flight 1575.
Marines in full dress uniform wearing white gloves carried the casket.
On Friday, Miller was laid to rest with military honors. “Taps” were sounded and Marines fired a volley.
Charmaine Rush, 89, Miller’s sister who ran after her mother all those years ago, watched as her brother was buried under a clear California sky.
The family was touched by the sight of first responders along the route Friday as they made the journey to the cemetery near where Miller grew up, Barry Rush said.
Police and firefighters parked their vehicles and flashed emergency lights as the cortege passed.
“We were not expecting that,” Rush said. “People were even on the overpasses.”
Miller’s family never forgot Howard, just recently married when he was killed.
He attended San Mateo High School and what is now the College of San Mateo. He loved playing football.
He worked for a time at Bethlehem Steel in San Francisco, according to a website that salutes fallen Marines.
“Betty,” a woman with dark hair cut just below her ears, captured Miller’s heart. He married her — Elizabeth Jane Bettinger from Hillsborough — inside St. Matthew’s Catholic Church, a place on Notre Dame Avenue in San Mateo where people still gather for spiritual comfort.
Miller was on a four-day furlough from boot camp when he pledged to stay true to Betty forever.
The Navy told her on New Year’s Eve 1943 that he was killed in action.
Along with his sister and a wife, Miller left a brother, Walter, a fellow Marine who survived the war, his mother, and a father who was in New York on a business trip when he learned his son was dead.
Miller was a handsome fellow.
He stood 5 feet 9 inches tall, sported dark hair clipped short, and as you would expect from any Marine, stared straight into the camera when his photograph was taken for military records.
Howard Elmer Miller was born May 6, 1921. He died Nov. 22, 1943, the third day into the battle to secure Tarawa.
“It’s safe to say that his death left a wound in our family that no one has ever gotten over,” Barry Rush said.
Twenty years to the day after Miller fell, an assassin took the life of President John F. Kennedy, a sailor who also distinguished himself in the Pacific during the war.
Miller served with Company A, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, Fleet Marine Force. He was with a rifle company in an infantry regiment.
The American push across the Pacific was bloody: Almost 6,400 Japanese, Koreans and Americans died in the fight that cost Miller his life on Betio, according to historians.
Miller’s body was found after more than a decade of excavations by History Flight, a Florida nonprofit that researches and recovers missing United States service members.
He was interred at Skylawn Funeral Home, Memorial Park and Crematory just days before the Marine Corps celebrated its 245th anniversary. The ceremony also took place less than a week before Veterans Day.
Sixteen million Americans served in World War II. More than 400,000 died, according to the Department of Defense.
That figure includes about 72,000 Americans who remain unaccounted for, including some lost at sea in the North Atlantic as they tried to ferry supplies to a starving Europe amid attacks from Nazi U-Boats.
Figures from the battle for Tarawa, where Miller died, show about 400 Americans are still missing, the defense department says on its website.
A total of 5,622 people who once lived in California remain missing in action from World War II.
“I consider it a tremendous honor to serve Private Miller and his family as a reflection of the selfless sacrifice that he and all members of our armed forces make in order to protect the freedom and safety of our communities,” Richard McCown, general manager at Skylawn, said in a statement.
DNA records helped identify Miller.
The Marine’s boots were found at the burial site, footwear that contained bits of bone that provided the DNA. Miller’s dog tags were also located, allowing his loved ones to know that, yes, it was him, and that, yes, he would soon come home.
Miller’s sister walked behind her brother’s casket at the cemetery, despite her age.
“She always talked about him as we were growing up,” Rush said about his uncle. “He was never forgotten. He was in her heart. He was her brother. I know it especially broke my grandfather’s heart when Howard was killed. Now maybe this gives hope to other families who are missing someone that they will be found.”