https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaProfile?id=a0Jt000001JAeP3EAL

On October 23, 2000, the Central Identification Lab-Hawaii (CILHI, now DPAA) accounted for Sergeant Clyde Thomason, missing from World War II.

Sergeant Thomason entered the U.S. Marine Corps from Georgia and was a member of Company A, 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. Sgt Thomason was killed in action during the ensuing battle. On August 19, he was buried on Butaritari by local villagers in a communal grave with other Marines who had died during the assault. 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 constructed by U.S. Navy Seabees after the island was taken by U.S. forces in 1943. The site was excavated and the comingled remains were recovered and transferred to CILHI, where analysts used forensic analysis to successfully identify Sgt Thomason.

Sergeant Thomason was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1943, just after his loss, becoming the first enlisted Marine to earn the honor. He is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.