U.S. Marine Private Howard Miller is coming home

Over time, the unmarked cemetery, and the American fighting men who perished during the fierce battle to secure Tarawa for the U.S. war effort, had become obscured. Proof of their selfless sacrifice seemingly had been lost. They had become missing in action. 

Decades later, the site was rediscovered. Miller’s remains, along with those of other slain Marines, were finally identified in March of this year by the Defense Department’s POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

The invasion of Betio was a particularly bloody and brutal one for the Marines due to serious problems with planning, preparation, intelligence and other factors (not the least of which was the unrelenting, in-depth resistance of the dug-in Japanese defenders) that severely hampered them once the amphibious operation directed at the Tarawa atoll and its vital military airstrip commenced.

A recent bulletin from “Missing Marines” indicated that Miller was born in 1921 in Michigan. The family moved to San Mateo County in the 1930s. 

After the war began in December of 1941, Miller volunteered to serve with the Marines in August of 1942. He married Elizabeth Jane Bettinger in October of that year at St. Matthew’s Catholic Church in San Mateo. An infantryman, he shipped out with the Marines in June of 1943.

On New Year’s Eve 1943, the Navy Department informed his wife and family that he had been killed in action. The information did not include where or how he had died or where his body had been laid to rest.

Miller’s remains are scheduled to be interred at Skylawn Memorial Park off State Route 92 in San Mateo on Friday.

Among those in respectful attendance are expected to be his sister Charmaine Rush, his nephew Barry Rush and his niece Marcy Silva.

(Thanks to Carla Hoen who provided a link to Miller’s biography in “Missing Marines.”) 

A MOVE TOWARD GINSBURG: A petition has begun to circulate online to rename Burlingame Intermediate School in the memory of the late U.S. Supreme Court justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

During her tenure in that judicial role, she became an iconic figure for American liberals who relished her opinions and views on a range of issues important to them, especially abortion.

BIS is one of seven campuses in the Burlingame Elementary School District. It is the only one not named for an individual. The other six schools are named for historical U.S. figures, five of them former presidents.

Among those are several whose legacies have come under fire from “woke” (or “newly enlightened”) social activists in other public school districts and communities, including McKinley, Washington, Roosevelt (both) and even Lincoln, the Great Emancipator.

Presumably, inserting Ginsburg’s name onto BIS would not risk potential scrutiny from disgruntled citizens in a distant future. But one never knows for sure.

A SIGN OF THE TIMES: The poignant, rather crude, hand-printed sign on soiled cardboard is gone now.

But, for awhile, the rudimentary alert was attached to the locked metal security gate of a Hillsborough mansion on tree-lined Brookvale Road. The plea was familiar: “Black Lives Matter.”

A few feet away from that hopeful message was a placard, this one a stern warning that the sprawling private property was under constant electronic surveillance and featured a direct emergency link to Hillsborough Police Department headquarters.

The irony was obvious.

A 17-DAY GRACE PERIOD: Over the last several weeks, media reports have been replete with multiple legal challenges involving the counting of late-arriving election ballots.

But you ain’t seen nothin’ ‘til you’ve checked out California. Here, a ballot postmarked on or before Nov. 3 can be counted up to 17 days after Election Day. Why 17? Why not 27? Or 37? Who knows?

Pardner, say howdy to the Wild West.  

Contact John Horgan by email at johnhorganmedia@gmail.com.