https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaProfile?id=a0Jt000001J4tUeEAJ

337436

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

Private Maulding, who entered the U.S. Marine Corps from California, was a member of Company A, 2nd Marine Raider Battalion. On August 17, 1942, members of the 2nd Raider Battalion participated in an attack on a Japanese seaplane base on the island of Butaritari, Makin Atoll, in the Gilbert Islands. During the ensuing battle, Private Maulding was killed and he was buried on Butaritari by local villagers in a mass burial with other Marines who had died during the assault. His remains were not recovered at the time of his loss nor after the war. In 1999, a CILHI investigative team traveled to Butaritari and interviewed a villager who participated in the burial, which led the team to a communal gravesite located under an abandoned coral road that had been built by U.S. Navy Seabees after the island was taken by U.S. forces in 1943. In late 1999, these comingled remains were received at the Central Identification Lab in Hawaii, and forensic analysis identified Private Maulding's remains from among them.

Private Maulding is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

Maulding, Robert B (Bob), Pvt