Top Photo: Private Randolph Ray Edwards. Image: Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency

A US Marine who was killed in a 1942 firefight with Japanese forces during the Solomon Islands Campaign was finally laid to rest in New Orleans on Friday, September 27, 2024.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced on May 17, 2024, that the remains of Private Randolph Ray Edwards have been identified and accounted for more than 80 years after his death.

Edwards served as a mortarman in Company D, 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division. In August 1942, Allied forces landed on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands as part of Operation Watchtower, starting a months-long struggle with Japanese forces for control of the island. US Marines established a perimeter to protect Henderson Field, a key airstrip on the island.

According to DPAA, the 7th Marine Regiment arrived on Guadalcanal on September 18, 1942, and was ordered to patrol areas toward Mount Austen. On September 24, the Marines defeated a small enemy force, but the sound of gunfire alerted other Japanese troops in the area. A large firefight ensued, and the next day Marines buried 10 fallen comrades, including Edwards, at locations known as “Hill X” and “Hill Y.” Edwards’s family was notified of his death overseas, and he was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart. Edwards was 23 years old when he died.

Searches conducted in 1947 and 1949 failed to locate the two grave sites in the jungle, and Edwards and his comrades were declared “unrecoverable.”

In 2012, investigators with the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) began researching and investigating the missing Marines buried at Hills X and Y. In 2014, two sites that were consistent with the details surrounding the losses were slated for excavation.

DPAA began excavations at Hill Y in 2016 and Hill X in 2018, and each location yielded human remains, identification tags, and other material evidence consistent with the Marines reportedly buried there. Laboratory analysis and the totality of other circumstantial evidence allowed scientists to identify Edwards among those remains.

Edwards is memorialized on the Wall of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines. A rosette will be placed next to his name to show that he has been accounted for.

Edwards was buried with full military honors on Friday, September 27, 2024, at Greenwood Cemetery in New Orleans, Louisiana.