Lukie, Joe
Marines Reserves Private 1st class

Joe Lukie, age 19, from Harvey, West Virginia, Fayette county.

Parents: Julie Lukie

Service era: World War II

Date of death: Saturday, November 20, 1943
Death details: On September 5, 2017, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of Private First Class Joe Lukie, missing from World War II. Private First Class Lukie joined the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve from West Virginia and was eventually assigned to Company K, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division. He was killed in action on November 20, 1943, during the amphibious assault on Betio Island, Tarawa Atoll, known as the Battle of Tarawa. Records failed to show where he was buried, and he could not be associated with any of the remains recovered from the island during recovery efforts in 1946 by the American Graves Registration Service (AGRS). The AGRS did recover more than ninety sets of unidentifiable remains and interred them as “unknown” remains in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP) in Hawaii. In 2014, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC, a predecessor organization to DPAA) excavated a site known as Cemetery 33 on Betio. Remains recovered during these excavations were turned over to the JPAC laboratory for analysis. In 2016, DPAA received permission to disinter the unknown Tarawa remains from the NMCP. DPAA analysts determined that one of the Tarawa unknowns was associated with remains recovered from Cemetery 33 by JPAC and consolidated the remains into a single accession. These remains were subsequently identified as PFC Lukie.
Cemetery: Oak Hill Cemetery, Fayette County (remains returned in 2018

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency