https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaProfile?id=a0Jt000001J4tGDEAZ

On October 23, 2000, the Central Identification Lab-Hawaii (CILHI, now DPAA) accounted for Corporal I.B. Earles, missing from World War II.

Corporal Earles entered the U.S. Marine Corps from California and was a member of Company A, 2nd Marine Raider Battalion. On August 17, 1942, members of the 2nd Raider Battalion attacked a Japanese seaplane base on the small island of Butaritari, Makin Atoll, in the Gilbert Islands. Cpl Earles was killed in the ensuing battle. On August 19, locals buried Cpl Earles in a communal grave on Butaritari. In 1999, a CILHI investigative team traveled to Butaritari where they interviewed a villager who participated in the burial. The team was led to the mass gravesite which was located under an abandoned coral road. The site was excavated and comingled remains were recovered and transferred to CILHI where analysts used laboratory analyses and circumstantial evidence to identify Cpl Earles.

Corporal Earles is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

I B Earles