Goo, Richard T. K.
Army Private
Richard T. K. Goo from Honolulu, Hawaii.
Service era: World War II
Date of death: Friday, July 7, 1944
Death details: On June 15, 1944, approximately 70,000 Allied troops landed on the island of Saipan in the Mariana Islands. For three weeks, American troops fought through well-organized Japanese defenses in cave-riddled mountainous terrain and pushed the enemy inland. By early July the Japanese were unable to retreat farther. At dawn on July 7, 1944, approximately four-thousand Japanese troops launched a massive banzai charge against U.S. Army and Marine Corps lines. The 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 27th Infantry Division’s 105th Regiment bore the brunt of the charge and took heavy losses. Barely one hundred men from each battalion survived the attack uninjured. American reinforcements stopped the attackers and defeated the Japanese force, securing the island by July 9. Many soldiers and marines who went missing in the attack remain unaccounted-for. Private Richard T. K. Goo, who joined the U.S. Army in Hawaii, served with the 105th Infantry Regiment, 27th Infantry Division, and was lost in the intense fighting on Saipan. His remains could not be recovered at the time of his loss, and he is still unaccounted-for. Today, Private Goo is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, findagrave.com