Remains of WWII marine from Brooklyn being returned for burial
Nancy Lewis never knew the uncle everyone called Joey, but the stories her grandmother would tell of the son who didn’t return from World War II made it seem like he was still around.
“She made him so real for us,” Lewis, 73, said as she and other family members awaited the arrival at Kennedy Airport on Friday of a flight carrying the casket with the remains of Marine Corps Pvt. Joseph Carbone. The Pentagon announced in July that his remains had been identified among those of other unknown servicemen killed in a bloody Pacific battle and reburied in Hawaii after the war.
The 20-year-old Brooklyn native was serving with the 2nd Marine Division when he was killed during the assault on Tarawa atoll in the Gilbert Islands, about 2,400 miles southwest of Hawaii, on Nov. 20, 1943. He died early on the first day of the three-day battle to take the tiny coral island from the Japanese.