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On October 23, 2000, the Central Identification Lab-Hawaii (CILHI, now DPAA) accounted for Private First Class William A. Gallagher, missing from World War II.

Private First Class Gallagher, who entered the U.S. Marine Corps from California, was a member of Company B, 2nd Marine Raider Battalion. On August 17, 1942, he was supporting the 2nd Raider Battalion when it attacked a Japanese seaplane base on the small island of Butaritari, Makin Atoll, in the Gilbert Islands. PFC Gallagher was killed during the action. On August 19, local villagers buried PFC Gallagher 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, located under an abandoned coral road. The site was excavated and the comingled remains were recovered and transferred to CILHI, where analysts used forensic analysis to successfully identify PFC Gallagher's remains.

Private First Class Gallagher is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

William A Gallagher