Twenty-six-year-old Sgt. Elden Grimm of Menasha was killed during the Battle of Tarawa in the Pacific Ocean nearly 75 years ago. Grimm will be buried with full military honors in Neenah on May 26.
Grimm was among about 1,000 Marines and sailors killed trying to secure a small island in the Tarawa Atoll in November 1943. His remains eventually were buried with the remains of other unknown U.S. service members from the battle at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu.
In October 2016, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency began exhuming those remains. Scientists used dental records to help identify Grimm’s remains last September.
