https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaProfile?id=a0Jt000001J4tZBEAZ

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

Private Nodland entered the U.S. Marine Corps from Iowa and 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 small island of Butaritari, Makin Atoll, in the Gilbert Islands. During the ensuing battle, Private Nodland 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 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 where they recovered commingled remains. In late 1999, the comingled remains were received at the Central Identification Lab in Hawaii, and forensic analysis eventually identified Private Nodland from among them.

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

Nodland, Franklin Merrill, Pvt